WireViz: Tool for documenting cables, wiring harnesses and connector pinouts - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/formatc1702/WireViz <comment><USER2> Man this looks great. So much easier than doing a drawing and you can version it in git etc.

If you are looking for feature requests :)

      Twisted pairs
      Ability to add cable braid to cable sections
      Ability to add heatshrink to connector backshells
      Ability to specify labels

I had a quick look at the code, looks nice and clean, I might have a go at one of the easier ones (like labels) a bit liater this week.

edit: formatting

<comment><USER3> I'd have another suggestion - sub-shields, especially around twisted pairs, like cat6 ethernet cable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is there a yaml or json dialect for general purposes graphviz?

I see wireviz is defined using yaml and builds on graphviz. I've always wanted to do more with graphviz but reluctant to use the [dot language][0] graphviz uses by default.

[0]: [http://graphviz.org/doc/info/lang.html](http://graphviz.org/doc/info/lang.html)

<comment><USER5> There are stuff that converts yaml to dot, like [https://gist.github.com/rchrd2/247d1f1e86fa3749429791cf45705...](https://gist.github.com/rchrd2/247d1f1e86fa3749429791cf457052e2)

but honestly just write dot, it's a simple format

see also [https://codefreezr.github.io/awesome- graphviz/](https://codefreezr.github.io/awesome-graphviz/)

<comment><USER4> Yeah after doing more research I'm leaning towards just writing dot. It does look nice.

Still, from a programmatic standpoint is there JSON equivalent? If wanted to build something like WireViz I would think that would be the most strait forward approach. I know there are lots of libs that compose it with mixes classes but I rather just build json objects...

<comment><USER5> I just found out that graphviz supports json as output. Check out [https://graphviz.org/doc/info/output.html#d:json](https://graphviz.org/doc/info/output.html#d:json)

(found this here [https://stackoverflow.com/a/51443514](https://stackoverflow.com/a/51443514))

I'm pretty sure that there's some tool out there to convert Graphviz's own json format back to dot

Perhaps [https://github.com/jsongraph/jgf- dot](https://github.com/jsongraph/jgf-dot) do it

And if not, [https://codefreezr.github.io/awesome-graphviz/#generators- an...](https://codefreezr.github.io/awesome-graphviz/#generators-and- translators) might contain something useful

<comment><USER4> Cool! Can you use the json as input?

<comment><USER5> I suppose [https://github.com/jsongraph/jgf- dot](https://github.com/jsongraph/jgf-dot) does exactly that, but not exactly with Graphviz's own json syntax, but using this spec:

[https://github.com/jsongraph/json-graph- specification](https://github.com/jsongraph/json-graph-specification)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Useful looking tool, I was gearing up for drawing a schematic with about 1000 nets at work tomorrow for a cable harness so this is perfect timing...

</comment><comment><USER7> This is super cool! Pinouts and wire colors are only part of a harness, though. Other things I care about:

Branch lengths and locations, where individual connectors branch off the main trunk of the harness.

Terminal types, because a single connector sometimes has different terminals per pin position, or per wire type, or other requirements.

Custom wire colors and gauges; multiconductor cables aren't always all the same gauge.

Inline splices (these may be implementable as a special case of a connector where most wires just pass through and just a few join on one "pin"?).

Is there a WYSIWYG or live-updating editor so you can see the result as you edit the markup? I understand why it's written that way, but it'd be a lot of work to translate certain harnesses to be expressed that way.

<comment><USER8> When I edit graphviz, I usually watch my source file(s) with reflex [1] to re- generate the output image, and use an image viewer with auto-reloading support like sxiv [2]. Works really well for me!

1: [https://github.com/cespare/reflex](https://github.com/cespare/reflex)

2: [https://github.com/muennich/sxiv](https://github.com/muennich/sxiv)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> That's amazing.

I don't think I've ever seen diagrams like these from GraphViz. I've spent the last couple of days trying to structure some complicated data for it to format to nicely, and I can't make it sing or dance nearly as well.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is awesome. Just did a big harness's at work and this would have saved a ton of time. Import from csv or excel would be a killer feature imo

<comment><USER11> seconded on csv import!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is really cool. It's something I find hard to document at the moment so I'll try this out with my next project.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is cool. Working on a small project with lots of sensors and associated amps/adcs/etc the wiring quickly gets out of control if you're just using breadboards. This will help keep things documented and surface the actual layout to help build dedicated connectors/cables.

</comment><comment><USER14> Could this also incorporate a library of common connector designs, to be included in the generated documents? Often it can be difficult to work out the numbering when they're very small on the real connectors.

</comment><comment><USER15> It would be of tremendous help if you could also use it for optical fiber buffers. Does anyone know if it's possible, if it's on the roadmap or if there's another FOSS tool that can do this? Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER16> I was looking for something like this for so long, I started writing my own. This is an awesome program, thank you for releasing it publicly!

</comment><comment><USER17> this is excellent, next time I'm at my amusement park job working on the analog PBX system, I will definitely use this in order to document the punch Downs and other wire cable runs from the analog phones to the voice gateways.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is great. For wiring audio studios patchbays I can see this coming in handy.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is amazing! Love that it's text based and the output looks great.

</comment><comment><USER11> Super cool!

Would love to see pdf export for standalone documentation generation

</comment><comment><USER20> That looks super good

</comment><comment> transistor-man Really interesting, thanks for posting.</comment>


Show HN: Free browser extension to help you find docs and wikis, fast - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lfendnpddepkibhcchpdjgheapdmgelc <comment><USER2> The Obie team is thrilled to share with you something new we've been working on. Well, truth be told, we've actually been working on a browser extension for over a year but hadn't found the proper launch pad for it until now.

Full details here: [https://obie.ai/personal](https://obie.ai/personal)

Today, we are announcing Obie for Chrome a free browser extension to help you find documents, notes, presentations, wikis (& more) FASTER at work.

Furthermore, the browser extension was a perfect vehicle to introduce two new (and very important) plans: Personal Free and Personal Pro. You see, before today, Obie was designed for teams and larger organizations—you also HAD to use Slack. Now, Obie is free and available for individual use.

WHAT Obie connects with over 16 out-of-the-box integrations such as: Google Drive, Confluence, Dropbox, GitHub and more to instantly enable one source of truth for knowledge at work.

WHO Founders, sales people, support agents, remote workers, marketers; anyone who frequently needs to access repeat information, can begin to accelerate work with Obie.

WHY We built the Obie browser extension to reduce the friction in getting started with our technology, reduce our dependency on Slack and democratize knowledge access at work.

HOW We use an intelligent federated search, combined with home-grown natural language processing and just a dash of rule-based machine learning to create a robust and intuitive search experience.

We'll be around to answer any questions and would LOVE to hear feedback if you give it a try - it's free and literally takes less than 1 minute to install and setup!</comment>


Symantec accused of malware scare tactics to sell its software - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/113303-symantec-accused-of-malware-scare-tactics-to-sell-its-security-software <comment><USER2> <http://www.b3ta.com/board/7320069></comment>


Are Influencers Responsible for the Behavior of Their Followers? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/04/style/tiktok-lgbt-harassment-donelij.html <comment><USER2> Let me pick an extreme - is Hitler responsible for the behavior of his followers? What is different from YouTube personalities?</comment>


Freeing UK Government Data - <AUTHOR> http://blog.programmableweb.com/2008/11/07/freeing-uk-government-data/ <comment><USER2> Being a government with several data loss scandals a month this is freaking me out big time. Less than a week ago a USB stick with login data to systems with 12M taxpayers was found on a pub car park. You can't imagine how many go unreported.

I'm all for freeing publicly owned data, but how is it going to happen is the scary bit.

<comment><USER3> I think the appalling state of government data security and this article are separate issues.

I was actually pleasantly surprised that there was a fairly forward thinking web-based initiative being sponsored by the government. The data in the article is exactly the sort of information that should be freely available for "mashing up"*

* That phrase sounds a bit too Nathan Barley-esque to me.

<comment><USER2> I agree on having that data publicly available. But note that data resides on the same systems the private data resides. A big mistake, just once, could mean an unprecedented breach.

And I happen to know consultants working for the government here in London, you don't want to know how bad things are.</comment></comment></comment>


Facial Recognition Moves into a New Front in the U. S.: Schools - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/business/facial-recognition-schools.html <comment><USER2> Read the comments for a depressing start to your day.</comment>


My butthole has been a location on Facebook since 2012 – I can't get it removed - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/ev28pn/my_butthole_has_been_a_location_on_facebook_since/ <comment><USER2> This might sound extreme, but if every other option has been exhausted it could be worth filing a claim in small claims court.

That should get the attention of someone more senior in the company, and there's a chance they'll see reason and have the page removed instead of litigating.

If you do wind up going to court, it'll be a media circus and they'll get some bad PR regardless whether you win or lose. Who knows, you might even win if you can show damages.

 _The Reddit link is locked so I left this comment here instead._

<comment><USER3> > _This might sound extreme, but if every other option has been exhausted it > could be worth filing a claim in small claims court._

What sort of damages could they prove?

<comment><USER4> The point is not to win the case. The point is to get the attention of someone in legal, who will take the request seriously.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >> _at the bottom of the page it claims to be automatically generated off interest of the topic_

I know op says that he/she was 15 when it was created, and I completely get that 15 year olds have a particular sense of humor, but I genuinely wonder what sort of actions were taken to demonstrate _" interest in the topic"_ that would lead to this page being _automatically_ created.

</comment><comment><USER6> Facebook has a similar thing near my house but it doesn't say my name. I guess small victories.

I posted this on FB in case I can get any of my friends who work there to help :)

<comment><USER7> Good luck with that. I had someone literally impersonating me with a fake account, and directly trying to get me fired from my job by sending my boss's friends messages. My supposed friends at Facebook were apathetic to it and wouldn't even refer me to someone who could help. My opinion of the whole company took a nosedive after that.

<comment><USER6> You should probably get better friends sadly...

<comment><USER7> > You should probably get better friends sadly...

You just admitted in your previous post that you're unsure if you would be successful in getting your own friends to help (even if this isn't you personally being affected in this situation, a favor is a favor), so even if your post wasn't incredibly rude it would still be intellectually dishonest. As you can see, my standards are already quite high.

<comment><USER6> My friends @ FB have absolutely helped get various things fixed for ME, unclear if there's a transitive level of assistance for other people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> well, youre in the anals of history at least.

(couldnt resist. yes im 40yrs old)

<comment><USER9> Being 40 means you have had time to accumulate a larger vocabulary for making butt and poop jokes.

<comment><USER6> And looooots of "dad jokes"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have good news, Facebook has taken it down!

Apparently posting this to Reddit gave it the exposure needed, apparently Buzzfeed did something useful by investigating this.</comment>


Pkg.jl telemetry should be opt-in - open-source-ux https://discourse.julialang.org/t/pkg-jl-telemetry-should-be-opt-in/42209 <comment><AUTHOR> If you're doing something that could be considered a violation of user privacy, like phoning home to a telemetry service, it should not be opt-out. Probably it shouldn't exist at all. Not everything has to have "telemetry" baked into it.

<comment><USER2> The matter of course to include telemetry eludes me. I think this criticism is correct and should even be expanded. I never looked into Julia, only R a bit and they have mutual interfaces. These discussion don't sell me the language at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> For context, this is the official page explaining what data is collected: [https://julialang.org/legal/data/](https://julialang.org/legal/data/) (the link is a bit hard to find between all the other links in the Discourse thread)

<comment> open-source-ux The data collection page is well-written and clearly explained. However, I still dislike like the idea of enabling 'anonymous telemetry' by default.

The problem of growing a programming language is one shared by many programing languages. Languages like Nim or Crystal have arguably even smaller programming communities than Julia. These other languages have not decided to pursue the option of telemetry to track usage (at least, not yet).

There are other ways of measuring the adoption or popularity of a language: libraries, courses, books, tutorials - they are not neccesarily accurate, but they give some insight.

Anyway, if this telemetry feature goes ahead, I think the clearest way to do it is as follows:

\- When installing a package, the user is informed that anonymous data will be sent to Julia's servers. Make it clear this data transmission is optional.

\- There is a link to the data collection/privacy page

\- There should be a clear link for users to see all the data from their computer that will be transmitted before it is sent.

\- Users can accept or decline the transmission of data.

\- Users can choose to bypass telemetry consent for future packages

\- Somewhere in the process above, there should be clear instructions (or a link) telling users how they can switch on and off telemetry at anytime.

This sounds like a lot. But at least by being clear and upfront, users can make an informed decision.

I realise it might seem churlish to complain about data collection when developers use tools and services that track their usage on a daily basis e.g. Visual Code by Microsoft or Google's vast (non-anonymous) services. But why stoop to their level?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Am I mistaken in thinking that this is a blatant violation of the gdpr and that distributing Julia to anyone in the EU is now illegal?

<comment><USER5> Not according to Karpinski [1], that is a core developer.

[1]: [https://discourse.julialang.org/t/pkg-jl-telemetry-should- be...](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/pkg-jl-telemetry-should-be-opt- in/42209/28)

<comment><USER4> Interesting... I'm sure that lawyer knows more about this than I do so I wonder what part of it I misunderstoood...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Opting out should be straight forward.

<comment><USER7> It is pretty simple to do and well documented. There's also a fair bit of control for the user to either completely opt-out, just opt-out of sending some data.

[https://julialang.org/legal/data/#opting_out](https://julialang.org/legal/data/#opting_out)

Has all the details.

<comment><USER6> I think it should be simpler than that, personally. Like the first message after or before installing Julia.

As it stands, I wouldn't have any idea upon first usage that that's how I'm supposed to turn it off.

<comment><USER5> It looks like `mkdir -p ~/.julia/servers && echo 'telemetry = false' > ~/.julia/servers/telemetry.toml` will do it unless you have messed with `JULIA_HOME`. Still, the documentation [1] makes it clear that there is no way that I would call "easy".

[1]: [https://julialang.org/legal/data/#opting_out](https://julialang.org/legal/data/#opting_out)

As someone that has been a Julia user for more than half a decade and a part of the community I feel very uneasy about now having to opt out of this feature each time I install anything above v1.4. Not to mention that I feel that I morally would have to notify other users when I recommend Julia to them. Performing privacy workarounds for FOSS is a rarity and I would be sad if we shift towards it becoming the norm, despite seeing that it can have upsides to the community itself.

<comment><USER8> > As someone that has been a Julia user for more than half a decade and a part > of the community I feel very uneasy about now having to opt out of this > feature each time I install anything above v1.4.

I'd certainly appreciate it if you repeated this in the discourse thread

<comment><USER5> Here is my attempt [1]. I find it incredibly difficult to motivate rationally and constructively the way I feel though. At times wondering if I am best ignored for the good of the community overall. What you are reading is my third attempt at a response is that thread. The first one ended up being some sort of long-winded mixture of a philosophical/technical monologue, the second one a simple statement of "I disagree, but I can not articulate why", the last attempt is what you read and I think I finally have arrived at the core of the issue for me which is consent. Is there any good write up anywhere on this? I feel like I just joined the FOSS camp about 20 years ago and that this has shielded me from ever having to lay out exactly why I want a future with more and more anonymity on all fronts.

[1]: [https://discourse.julialang.org/t/pkg-jl-telemetry-should- be...](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/pkg-jl-telemetry-should-be-opt- in/42209/63)

<comment><USER8> Thanks!! Yes, I do think that consent is at the core of it for me as well. I wasn't nearly as articulate and self-deprecating as you were :-)

It seems to me that the counts for Julia and for packages can be gamed by doing Sybil attacks, so to me it both feels morally wrong, and that it won't work well.

thanks again

<comment><USER5> You are welcome and thank you for raising this to my attention as I sadly do not have the time to be as involved as I once was.

Since we are currently Julians is a wider forum I would also like to advise non-Julians and Julians alike against kneejerking along the lines of: "They are coming to take our freedom!". As opposed as I am to this specific feature, one would do well to read the technical background [1,2] as there are plenty of points in there that I gladly support as moves towards a world with more privacy and platform diversity than the current one – it also makes for interesting technical reading at that. Those behind this are not horned demons and do have the community in mind even if we seemingly disagree on the matter of consent.

[1]: [https://github.com/JuliaLang/Pkg.jl/issues/1377](https://github.com/JuliaLang/Pkg.jl/issues/1377)

[2]: [https://github.com/JuliaLang/Pkg.jl/pull/1544](https://github.com/JuliaLang/Pkg.jl/pull/1544)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Executive fired after opposing 5,000% drug price hike - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/03/17/executive-fired-after-opposing-5000-drug-price-hike/81917308/ <comment><USER2> I'm surprised that nobody here pointed out that this was another Martin Shkreli case, nor did USAT in its title choice.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you didn't have government-given monopolies that lasted 20 years and you allowed competition to come in from outside the country as well, this wouldn't happen.

Trying to regulate every single drug's price is a fool's errand. Maybe you can stop these "5,000% hikes", but what about the 300% ones? The 80% ones? That happen simply because there's no competition.

<comment><USER4> daraprim is not under a patent. The market for it is small and there was no FDA approved competitor, but there is no insurmountable barrier to entering the market for it.

I guess it might be the case that FDA red tape was keeping other entrants from bothering with an alternative, I don't really understand the complaints about their generic approvals process well enough to have an opinion.

The US Federal government could probably go further than fixing any regulatory hurdles and set up a program to incentivize/ensure production of drugs (especially inexpensive ones) that are valuable for small numbers of people. Such money would surely be well spent in comparison to many existing programs.

<comment><AUTHOR> The thing is: the "FDA red tape" is justified but expensive, and the market is so small that it takes a long time to recover the initial outlays. One thing that could be done is subsidies for FDA-related expenses for orphan drugs.

<comment><USER4> If it is justified it isn't red tape.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Niche SaaS Idea Generator - <AUTHOR> https://ideas.parkeragee.com <comment><USER2> _Meta idea_ : Have a web-page like this that splashes random words to generate ideas and measure the click rate of users hitting the refresh button. The longer the pause, likely the better the idea, at which point you flag that as a potential good one for yourself.

<comment><USER3> Longer pause doesn't mean better ideas. I pause because I never heard the words before or because the words is longer than others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is barebones. What we also need is some market analysis and some SWOT analysis. I have been thinking of a crowdsourced website where each startup is profiled under the categories 1) SWOT 2)Market size 3)Competitors 4)what does it take to build MVP.

I think such a site will be valuable

<comment><USER5> Sorry, what dues SWOT stand for ? Google search is giving something else hence asking you here lol.

<comment><USER6> It stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Basically a matrix of [good/bad][internal/external].

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The idea this generated for me is a "SaaS Generator" site. Rather than a random idea, user would select industry and service and business model, etc. and then click "generate my application". Generated app would have a polished placeholder responsive web site with multi-tentant IdP and drip email marketing and GA analytics Stripe and QuickBooks accounting, and ... - all the stuff you'd do for a SaaS business. Then add some copy and pricing and see if it sticks. Not not much Minimal Viable Product and "Minimal Viable Pitch". Generate a dozen businesses and then see which gets the most traffic. I think such a SaaS Generator site would be super helpful.

</comment><comment><USER8> Good choice of app ideas and audience. I think i didn't get any complete nonsense, as it's often the case with similar generators.

Edit: If someone is interested in all the "ideas", just open the .js file and scroll to bottom.

</comment><comment><USER9> A/B Testing for Churches! Convert more!

<comment><USER10> I got Sales Analytics for Churches ---

Just deploy a webserver that prints "0"

<comment><USER11> hahahaha well done

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I must be honest, the red is hardcore on my eyes. Can you maybe make it a little less "intense" :)

</comment><comment><USER13> The oppsdaily.com mailing list has been nice to get somewhat random/niche ideas from. (I'm not affiliated)

<comment><USER5> HUGE ANNOYING problem with OppsDaily is that it FAILS to connect the makers with the "Wanters". See the comments on the top voted ideas for example. Most have 2 or 3 engineers / makers begging for contact info of the requestor / Wanters.

Good idea, terrible execution.

<comment><USER13> Good to know, I've never gone past reading the actual mailing list, was curious about that process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Congrats!

Why are the keywords underlined but not clickable??

Violates Basic web usage guidelines and is confusing!!

<comment><USER14> It symbols words that will be replaced when you click the button...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "CRM for Small Businesses" was the second one, kinda vague?

</comment><comment><USER16> remind me of my old project :) [https://mohdhazwan.github.io/instaniche/](https://mohdhazwan.github.io/instaniche/)

</comment><comment> the-dude If ideas had any value, they would not be given away.

Ideas have no intrinsic value.

<comment><USER17> While true, I find that I have a very hard time coming up with ideas that I could implement as a side project that makes money. Something like this could potentially be helpful.

<comment><USER18> You don't have to come up with ideas: that work has already been done for you. You only need to choose one.

To get an idea: gather the names of 50 software companies and perhaps 50 companies in other areas. Research all of them.

Somewhere in those 100 businesses, there is a domain that interests you, with a product that you can improve on or market differently.

There's your side project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It literally suggested my current company. Nice work.

</comment><comment><USER20> you should add one more idea - 'Niche SaaS Idea Generator'

</comment><comment><USER21> This is basically combinatorial contextless. A method of ranking and sorting the generated ideas is needed.

</comment><comment><USER22> All the ideas are good to generate money, but bad for mankind and civilization. There's already too much vendor lock-in and ausence of communication between platforms.

We should aim for a single tool that would serve for all kinds of businesses. What's the difference between a CRM for salons and one for bookstores? Probably something that could be sold as a plugin, or -- if the underlying system is good enough -- implemented with a bit of custom code.

That's what Fieldbook and Airtable are trying to do, and I sincerely hope they succeed (although they're awful, the tool I'm building myself is much better).

<comment><USER13> +1</comment></comment>


TextExt.js - jQuery plugin for modular input boxes - <AUTHOR> http://textextjs.com?ref=hn

<comment><USER2> Along with sunchild's feedback, I would also say that selecting an item from the dropdown should tokenize it (it has been selected after all!).

Also just a side note from my own experience, I have found modular input boxes to cause cognitive friction for users in almost all cases except adding "cc" and "bcc" users to messaging systems. Otherwise, it seems to slow people down when using...at least from my tests. This guy <http://www.ryancramer.com/journal/entries/select_multiple/> gives a pretty good walk-through of my own findings.

I personally have found that this library <http://www.suumit.com/projects/bsmSelect/examples/index.html> (in particular example # 5) along with actually animating the "fly ins" of the tokens, to be very obvious to the majority of users when a small number of multiple selects are needed.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> What do you guys think? Yay, nay?

<comment><USER3> I think it's a great idea! I'd love to use it! Some ideas:

\- Clicking on a selection didn't make it look like a tag (blue box) \- Once you have more than 4 blue tags in the field, additional ones don't get added or aren't visible. It's probably best to add another line of height to see them all. Or to avoid the problem entirely, take the resolved 'tags' out of the input box and put them below. Perhaps by accepting a jQuery selector for where they should be dropped? \- It would be nice if the 'prompt' option also read from the html5 placeholder attribute \- tag items that are set should probably be settable via the option value not the display text, or maybe both? \- An option to remove the blue arrow: if you have thousands of items in the list you don't want to display them all.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for feedback

> Clicking on a selection didn't make it look like a tag (blue box)

This will be fixed in the next patch release

> Once you have more than 4 blue tags in the field, additional ones don't get > added or aren't visible.

I'm able to ad any number of tags and the input expands vertically to accomodate. What browser/os are you on?

> It would be nice if the 'prompt' option also read from the html5 placeholder > attribute

Good idea, will add it to the queue!

> tag items that are set should probably be settable via the option value not > the display text, or maybe both?

Not sure what you mean.

> An option to remove the blue arrow

Blue arrow comes from the Array plugin, omitting which will result in the missing arrow.

<comment><USER3> I see the input expand vertically now, cool! Looks like duplicates are allowed, which probably shouldn't.

On the tag items I meant that in your demo code you have: tagsItems : [ 'jquery', 'plugin', 'tags', 'autocomplete' ],

Which is a listing of the items to include by their visible text. My suggestion is to use an ID instead (if they're objects). I ran $('input#textarea').val() on your demo and didn't get any value, how do you get the value out of the input box?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Props: Small Planes for Small Wars - <AUTHOR> http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/props-small-planes-for-small-wars <comment><USER2> I'm wondering why the article doesn't say more about drones? Seems like they could be even cheaper.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think war is dumb on lots of dimensions. But the Rutan Mudfighter looks like a great, economical aircraft [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG9LlHcX8lg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG9LlHcX8lg) for killing lots of small armed people.

Basically a Bayliner glued to a minigun.

<comment><USER4> Not to pick nits, but there's nothing "mini" about the GAU-12 Equalizer cannon ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAU-12_Equalizer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAU-12_Equalizer)). Scary stuff.

I didn't make it through the 1980s video long enough to learn if the aircraft has any protection for the pilot, like the A-10 is famous for ("titanium bathtub" and all that).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Those cheaper aircraft won't seem like such a great deal when the single engine fails and the pilot gets tortured to death on YouTube after ejecting over enemy territory. The article doesn't mention anything about drones / UCAVs, which seems like a major oversight.

<comment><USER6> F-35's are also single engine.

<comment><USER5> Right and that was another terrible decision. The V/STOL F-35B variant was only practical with a single engine because twin engines would have caused dangerous thrust imbalances during landing. But that constraint forced the F-35A and F-35C models to also have single engines for commonality, resulting in lower speed, higher drag, and reduced survivability. The whole program is full of misguided compromises like that.

<comment><USER6> Well the F-16 is also single engine, as are a great many other successful fighter planes.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Essential Swedish tech jargon all programmers in Sweden should know - <AUTHOR> https://www.thelocal.se/20191101/essential-tech-jargon-all-programmers-in-sweden-should-know-tyreso-c3l-tlccu <comment><USER2> It's a paid-for advertisement, by a company selling a "Swedish for Programmers" course.

<comment><USER3> Looks like class is free to the student (but possibly charged to the municipality -- "Your municipality needs to sign part 2 of the application form").

Likely only for people already resident in Sweden.</comment></comment>


Brain is ten times more active than previously measured - <AUTHOR> http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/11147.html <comment><USER2> Blogspam of

[http://medschool.ucla.edu/body.cfm?id=1158&action=detail&ref...](http://medschool.ucla.edu/body.cfm?id=1158&action=detail&ref=952)

</comment><comment><USER3> I guess this means we were all using 100% of our brains after all...</comment>


Why I gave up on Asana after 15 minutes - <AUTHOR> http://lumakey.net/blog/why-i-gave-up-on-asana-after-15-minutes/ <comment><USER2> I have some similar frustrations with Asana. The UX leaves a fair bit to be desired, especially when it comes to organizing bigger stuff into projects, subtasks, and so on. The android app isn't very great.

That said, we use Asana at my (30 employee) org. We have teams, lots of projects, and I've wired their projects into our own intranet stuff and email lists using api integrations. We use tags and projects, have github wired in (commit messages that reference an asana task show up in Asana under that taks), and a nice little Slack integration.

Thing is, if you want the ability to have lots of bigger structures, shared across multiple teams, there is likely to be a hefty startup cost - it isn't a simple thing to do. We previewed a lot of different project management tools, and Asana struck a nice balance between powerful enough and useful out of the box. We end up doing our own onboarding and norming with new employees, but it's worth it ultimately.

I'd love to see examples of other software at a similar price point that has project, subtask, team, comment-thread, and tag features with Asana levels of api integrations available.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yeah, I tried to use Asana and personaly really disliked it. Mostly because of the cumbersome UI and expectation mismatch of how things should work.

Then, in a ~10people Team we (after lonog debate) used Asana, and after the first days, nobody was using it, because it was horrible.

I can't really put my finger on it. It somehow feels like a Prototype after checking off long feature checklists.

</comment><comment><USER4> I highly recommend Todoist. Awesome web UI, mobile apps, keyboard shortcuts, and a simple API if you need anything more fancy.

<comment><USER5> Can't recommend ToDoist for one reason - there is no straightforward way to duplicate sets of tasks. You can't copy and paste. Not in the iOS app, not in the web app, not in the Mac app. ToDoist is super inflexible and For that reason I had to bail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great post. I felt the same when I tested it!

User Onboard should review this site. Check them out if you haven't already (not my site) [https://www.useronboard.com/](https://www.useronboard.com/)

<comment><USER7> UserOnboard review of Asana: [https://www.useronboard.com/how-asana-onboards- new-users/](https://www.useronboard.com/how-asana-onboards-new-users/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've tried using many different online tools for tracking software projects and work (including Todoist, Trello et al) and eventually settled on Asana.

It's not perfect, but it most closely matches the workflow I need. It's flexible without being overly generic (Trello) yet doesn't impose or constrain your workflow too much as some other tools do.

There certainly are some quirks though, and my biggest peeve is the 'empty task' problem described in the original article. If I could vote for one fix, it would be that!

</comment><comment><USER9> I've been looking at project management tools for work. I asked on FB what people were using and received multiple recommendations for Trello, a few for Asana and none for Basecamp (which is the one I know best).

I played around with Trello and it's all about cards. My problem is that I want lists, not cards. Haven't used Asana yet. Basecamp seems to be the best fit for my needs (I want to see what has been checked off and create repeatitive processes).

<comment><USER10> I was introduced to HansoftX on an open source project I was contributing to and 10/10 would use it again.

It was deceptively simple to get started but really powerful once I was able to dig in a bit more. Super responsive drag-drop UI and apparently it uses Meteor as the back-end so change updates are instantaneous.

It uses both lists (that can be nested multiple layers deep) and cards. You can drag tasks from lists to cards, or from cards to lists with links between the two being maintained. We were using the cards to track ToDo/Working/Done and lists to plan releases and track suggestions.

The project seems really young but they're doing all the 'right things'. One of the project contributors set it up to trigger notification updates in Slack when the boards changed and apparently it even has GitHub integration now.

I'm in no way affiliated with HansoftX. I just think it's a pretty amazing tool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think that a major driving force behind how slowness of asana is how their API is formatted. In order to load up the my tasks section you need a minimum of 2 requests per 100 tasks that exist in your workspace. And if they don't bump the request limit to 100 then they need 2 requests every 25 tasks.

</comment><comment><USER12> I gave up on Asana when it started retooling to focus more exclusively on Agile/Scrum stuff. No tool should be allowed to claim to be about improving productivity if it also goes out of its way to support constructs taken from Agile/Scrum.

</comment><comment><USER13> Try toodledo.com. It is more flexible and customizable than the others. Disclosure: I am the CEO.</comment>


YC's NewsTilt Aims To Help Journalists Create A Business Model For Content - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/12/ycs-newstilt-aims-to-help-journalists-create-a-business-model-for-content/ <comment><USER2> I have to say this is a brilliant idea. Currently, smart readers (like me!) have more allegiance to particular writers and journalists that they know are good than a newspaper or a magazine. So it makes complete sense for good writers to strike out on their own and not be tied down to the capital intensive and debt ridden newspapers.

And of course this is better than the usual blogging platform, because if they can establish themselves as having quality content they can eventually get more money or even provide a subscription model for some of their more popular journalists.

I see one problem however. The major thing that hounds all newspapers is libel suits and the like. It is not clear whether this type of service is responsible for the stuff written by its member journalists. However, all those statements about how they have editors and control their content editorially can certainly be used by some clever lawyer to say that the company is liable for any damages committed by any of its journalists.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know if I'm reading it wrong or techcrunch missed some details but this just sounds like wordpress/blogger + "for journalists"...

<comment><USER4> Sounds much more hands-on than that to me, almost like a record label or book publisher.

<comment><USER5> ...or a newspaper. What they've done is hire a bunch of journalists to write blogs.

Still, there're plenty of interesting things you could do with a network of strong brands beyond Adsense. I'm guessing the 80% Adsense revenue is just to give the journalists something _now_ for building their brands.

<comment><USER6> Its 80% of all revenue, and adsense is just the simplest thing to go with right now. We're in talks with multiple other revenue streams, mostly for syndication, and better ad rates. Stay tuned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is, I'm assuming, a startup responding to RFS 1: The Future of Journalism (<http://ycombinator.com/rfs1.html>).

<comment><USER6> Surprisingly, we came about another way. We actually applied to YC with a sort of Disqus clone designed for newspaper. We slowly migrated over to this after talking to lots of journalists over a couple of months.

<comment><USER7> I wasn't sure how long you guys have been in stealth mode, so I thought you might've applied before the RFSs came out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> News is all about the brand. This is just a reset for the industry, and chance for writers to entirely absolve themselves from the old management model and old media entities, and create new, light-weight unencumbered news brands. The fact that they are being strict with writers and editors means that they actually care about quality -- just like Apple.

<comment><USER6> I was with you til the last three words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Given the even point spread over the comments on this thread, the verdict is still out. Something's going to work, and I haven't found it yet so it will be interesting how this pans out. I definitely would want something where I can grab the headlines I like and the ability to drill down deeper in the articles.</comment>


Where Flight Search Engines Fail - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@theorm/where-flight-search-engines-fail-48076f04c226 <comment><USER2> Each flight search engine optimize for something slightly different so it is important to know what that is to help you get what you're looking for.

My personal favorite flight search is Kayak's Explore map [1] which simply shows all of the possible destinations and the best prices to each. The itineraries it comes up with are of varying lengths and for various times of years, but there are some pretty incredible deals you'd never find by searching random dates.

I recently found a $38 ticket round trip SFO to Chicago and there are routinely sub $400 tickets LAX to various airports around Scandinavia. The best deal I've ever seen was $354 RT LAX to Tel Aviv.

[1] [http://www.kayak.com/explore/](http://www.kayak.com/explore/)

<comment><USER3> Kayak explore tool is great. There have been numerous startups trying to build the same, but to make it useful one needs to have a lot of data. Kayak has arguably more data than any other metasearch engine.

Map is definitely useful and for an opportunistic traveller is a great tool. Flystein is not trying to compete with it. Where it is good though is a constrained trip, with fixed dates and requirements, or a complex trip. Map like this would not show a multi city trip.

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem with Explorer is that it is showing lowest prices which somebody found some hours or even days ago, and most of these cached prices are gone when you are trying to validate them but sometimes you could get lucky ;)

It is like a multiplied problem of metasearch stale/cached prices, also some OTAs seems to show stale prices on purpose to play the bait and switch game...

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I've noticed the caching problem a few times, though all of the prices I listed were actual prices I sent friends who purchased or I validated by following the process to the actual fare page. Though sometimes the really cheap fares are with budget airlines who upsell for carry-on and checked baggage lifting the price.

There were a few too good to be true Air Canada prices (sub $400 to India) I saw a few weeks ago, but those didn't exist once checked.

I've been able to convince friends to purchase tickets who would otherwise not have traveled by posting the fare to Facebook. Chicago seems to be a popular one my friends want to go, and they end up being convinced when they see a sub $100 RT ticket from California.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sounds exactly the same as FlightFox

<comment><USER5> Almost exactly but not as good. FlightFox doesn't make you link to the ceiling price, so you can pick a price you don't want to go over and then you don't pay if they can't help you. While Flystein makes you prove your price with a link, which isn't all that easy considering that many rates can't be deeplinked.

<comment><AUTHOR> At Flystein we ask a link OR a screenshot in case of Beat My Price so there is no problem here. Also you could just specify some realistic budget in the text description with Build My Trip option and you are very welcome to try our services :) Cheers!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Combining competing airlines' flights is rarely done, but is actually not as impossible to do programmatically as the article suggests. This is exactly what we do at [https://skypicker.com](https://skypicker.com) and it really works wonders — we are regularly seeing combinations that are 90% cheaper than alternatives on other sites.

<comment><AUTHOR> Skypicker looks like a promising tool. At Flystein we use multiple internal and 3d party tools as there is no silver bullet which covers everything, plus there is nothing so far which could completely replace a human brain and common sense :)

</comment></comment><comment> sasha-m Very interesting and very promising. The stress and anxiety that accompanies flight ticket search, if price is a big factor, is usually so high, that I often wish I could pay a small fee to somebody reliable online who I could trust to get me the cheapest ticket that fits the combination of my parameters, and spend that time and stress on more important things.

</comment><comment><USER7> upboat

</comment><comment><USER8> Up</comment>


Software Piracy Birthed an Underground Art Scene (2018) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hpu5IxLIPR8 <comment><USER2> I'm the author of 03 of those ANSi art screens displayed on 20min50.

Here are the links to the full artworks: [http://blocktronics.org/lu-glitch- ans/](http://blocktronics.org/lu-glitch-ans/) [http://blocktronics.org/luciano- spidertronics/](http://blocktronics.org/luciano-spidertronics/) [http://www.ansigarden.com/downloads/death-roses-bbs- theme/](http://www.ansigarden.com/downloads/death-roses-bbs-theme/)

<comment><AUTHOR> These are awesome.

Does anybody know of a good library that can generate images (jpg, png etc.) from ANSI art files?

<comment><USER2> Thank you!

Yes. AnsiLove: [https://github.com/ansilove/ansilove](https://github.com/ansilove/ansilove)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

One thing I really enjoy is the close brotherhood the ANSI scene has with the demoscene. I'm not quite sure how the venn diagram overlaps but there's all these really interesting underground computing art scenes and these ones are really close together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I miss the demoscene. Even coded a couple of demos back in the day (unrelated to cracking, though.)

Some of the Farb Rausch stuff was phenomenal ([http://farb- rausch.de/](http://farb-rausch.de/))

I sorta feel like some of the magic is gone now, though, because computers are so powerful. There's no graphical effect that you can't either do directly, or at least fake with sufficient realism that you can't really tell it's fake.

<comment><USER4> I'd say the "new" technical challenge for those so inclined is 64k demos and such.

Also there's still a lot of people who make demos for the old platforms, like the c64, Amiga, Gameboy...

Take a look on [http://www.pouet.net/](http://www.pouet.net/) if you are interested. Some demos have been recorded as video so you can watch them without the actual hardware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I remember attending the first HOPE conference in 1994. Shocked, but understand, to see it is now $170 to attend (unless you hack admission?);)

I started in 1978 on a Commodore PET 2001 with a cassette drive to load and store programs, and using PEEK and POKE commands. I moved on to Amiga, PC, Macs running Minix, Linux and the usual suspects. You were always low-level then, and I loved creating tunes on my Vic-20 and Amiga 500. The demoscene came along and inspired me to push my 6502 and 286/386 assembly skills to squeeze as much as possible out of my system's resources. I never joined the demoscene, but only created at home back in the days of my old 300 baud modem (2400 baud modems were over $500).

I think this early wonder with low-level, and being crafty, is why I think I find myself attracted to languages (like forth, CToy, the TCC compiler, J, and even assembly) amongst the bloat of Python, Java, C++, and JavaScript. However, I do like Zig/Rust for low-level. One-line C code to produce music from the command line? You bet; watch and listen to bisqwit. [1]

The demoscene produces some truly entrancing artwork, an acid trip manifested in pixels. I have great respect for the sole creators and creative teams alike that make such spectacles.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9KLnN0GczI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9KLnN0GczI)

</comment><comment><USER6> @ 1:08:20

> "Yes that is a water melon"

:P wicked tunes though.

[EDIT]

I still can't get over just how good some of the music is in the old 80s/90s demos.

I enjoy the modern 140/512/1k/4k graphic code golfing sites but feel there is a serious hole for music here.

<comment><USER7> 4k demos often have some pretty impressive music, a lot of them use soft synths designed specifically for use in 4k demos like [https://github.com/askeksa/Oidos](https://github.com/askeksa/Oidos)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does it also play a huge part in the advancement of computer graphics in general? As I've often understood it, the demo scene people were usually some of the most talented in their field.

<comment><USER9> Not a huge part, at least not directly. Many sceners do work in the graphics industry (cgi, games, hw etc) but demos are mostly just a hobby for everyone. I feel like lots of stuff done in demos is not really practical for "real- world" use.

There is one interesting example of where demoscene has managed to break into more commercial world: [https://www.notch.one/](https://www.notch.one/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Only a few Atari 8-bit people in the audience, but one thing that wasn't covered in his overview was ATASCII art - sometimes made with a program called a "Breakin' Generator". There are some online demos here: [http://www.breakintochat.com/collections/atascii/](http://www.breakintochat.com/collections/atascii/)

</comment><comment><USER11> I miss Morph's Outpost and Kai Krause.</comment>