Gmail's new look - <AUTHOR> http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/gmails-new-look.html <comment><USER3> One thing I dislike in the new Google styling is the general lack of contrast. It makes navigation a bit slower due to delayed object recognization for power users.

Everything just takes milliseconds longer to sink in.

<comment><USER4> On a related note, I find it very difficult to distinguish between the white background of unread message rows from the very-slightly gray background of read rows. (Probably worth noting that I'm mildly colorblind though.)

The bold subject on unread messages helps, but it isn't enough for my eyes.

<comment><USER5> I'm not colorblind at all, and I have a hell of a time distinguishing between read and un-read mail in the new look.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The new search dropdown is what I am excited about. I know that the operators were always there and advanced search was a click away, but what can I say, I am lazy.

<comment><USER7> I'm lazy too, and that's why I prefer to type in keywords rather than having to tab-tab-tab-tab-tab until I get to the relevant field or worse, having to grab my mouse to select the kind of search I want to do. It seems it will still be possible to type directly keywords in the field so it's okay. I hope they also let all the key-binding (for instance, '/' to focus the searchbox).

Now, let's hope that the next step is not to make Gmail just a Google+ app, like they did with Google Reader.

<comment><USER8> Hopefully they'll leave in the ability to just type in your boolean search. I prefer that method as well and send myself a lot of email so I'm often searching for stuff like [from:me has:attachment]

<comment><USER9> using a search dropdown just adds those operators automatically, so manual typing should work exactly the same

<comment><USER10> Which is the best way to learn those operators. The shortcut "/" to get to the search box is probably what I use the most, and writing "from:john to:mailing- list" is such a great time saver, if you compare to other mail clients.

<comment><USER7> What I use the most is [j]/[k] to move between email from the inbox while using [x] to select some messages which i [shift]+[i] to mark them as read and the [e] to archive. I think I easily do that with half of my emails for which reading the subject (and sometimes also the little preview) is enough to know that I don't have to read them.

This is what makes Gmail very powerful for me.

<comment><USER11> I totally agree, except that I tend to use [y] to archive, since it also does the "right thing" from views other than the Inbox (e.g. removing label "Todo" from selected emails when viewing all emails with label "Todo").

I also use [ and ] a lot. From message view, they archive the current message and immediately move to the previous/next message in the current list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Seems like they addressed a lot of the initial gripes people had with the new UI preview. I'm hopeful that similar evolution will be coming to Google Reader.

<comment><USER13> The thing I'm most impressed about is the speed at which this has come out.

It seems like gmail has previously changed at a glacial speed (for better/worse).

I hope they continue to improve the UX of gmail on a continuous basis.

<comment><USER14> Google is in the midst of the largest redesign in its history. There may be more to come. Here is a cool talk about this by Jon Wiley, Lead Designer for Google Search: <http://vimeo.com/29965463> He talks about GMail around 11min10s

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Each time Google updates Gmail, there is another hit on accessibility for visually impaired users. With each new version, zooming makes the content area smaller and smaller, while making the (significantly less useful) editing elements and other mostly uninteresting things larger and larger. Adding more padding and reducing contrast is completely at odds with accessibility (and, potentially, a good desktop mail experience). I think I can still get by with Gmail at high zoom, but one or two more changes and I'll have no choice but to jump ship to something else (or go fulltime with Outlook, which is overkill for personal mail).

It makes me really sad to see that accessibility is getting worse at Google, not better. The problem isn't limited to Gmail, it's also now in core search and probably just about everything else since the G+ wave of updates. :(

<comment><USER5> I've been thinking of jumping the Google ship these days. Dropbox killed google docs for me, G+ didn't attract enough of my friends for it to be worth my time, Google reader went from my favorite waste of time, to outta sight, outta mind, Gmail got rid of my custom color scheme, and makes it impossible to read big long email threads all at once, and I can't even tell which emails I'v read the contrast is so effin bad. The only thing I'd have a hard time leaving is chrome, but I just bought my first mac, and Safari doesn't seem too bad. Google is still a powerhouse, but I wonder if they didn't just do this: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpraJYnbVtE>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I use a netbook for my gmail. This new UI is, once again, a big negative from me because of all the wasted "white space".

I hate this love affair we have at the moment with white space. To me, it's wasted space. I guess I just hate scrolling or maybe I should just move to Asia.

<comment><USER17> Inevitably when you develop web technology at scale you end up asking the question of whether you should degrade the experience of the common case to make it ~comfortable for, e.g., netbooks.

Usually the answer, at least for a service like GMail, is to just ignore the netbooks. I actually think that's the right answer almost always, but I would absolutely love to hear the opposing view, as this is a position that I feel I don't fully understand.

<comment><USER18> It's basically just a styling issue though. Couldn't they just provide a "netbook style"? Consider that tablets are about the same size and tablets are probably going to be the "common case". Unless of course they are providing a specific "tablet style".

Another poster indicated that the theme automatically resized based on window dimensions. I'm not seeing the new theme (merely the "Preview" theme in the list - there's a "Preview (Dense)" in the theme list as well).

<comment><USER19> > Couldn't they just provide a "netbook style"?

How did we lose sight of the fact that this is the entire purpose of stylesheets? To separate the display of information for various devices/platforms/needs. So yea, they should provide a "netbook style", and any other. That's really the point of it all.

> I'm not seeing the new theme

When it rolls out to your account, you'll see a little black notification bar/box in the bottom-right asking you if you want to try the new theme.

<comment><USER20> "How did we lose sight of the fact that this is the entire purpose of stylesheets? To separate the display of information for various devices/platforms/needs. So yea, they should provide a "netbook style", and any other. That's really the point of it all."

Seems to me, "a couple of years ago". That's when any real innovation in CSS seemed to cease.*

* I can hear people arguing already. By "innovation in CSS", I don't mean "cool, awesome tricks" like "being able to render strange bullets in pure CSS by bastardizing four divs, a span, and a dozen lines of stylesheet", or "a bargraph library that outputs pure CSS".

Those are cool, awesome tricks, to be sure, hacks, but the very definition of "solving the wrong problem".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I get the point that designers want to design and fiddle with everything like little children, constantly, regardless of how other people have actual work to do regardless of their playtime.

However constantly changing any user interface is a fantastic way to make customers furious when they can no longer find things and have to stop to adapt, over and over.

Why not allow the old look to function for years instead of weeks or months. There is no way you are going to convince me google doesn't have the resources to do that, it's not a massive internal change, it's a visual layer.

I really need to make a point to switch to Thunderbird and imap in 2012 - google is getting on my last nerve on every product they offer.

<comment><USER22> For every old user that hates the change, there are a million people who have never used gmail before and will like it when they switch. Why should progress be held back because you can't adapt?

(I don't really like Google's new style either, but it doesn't really upset me or damage my experience in any way.)

<comment><USER23> Unlikely. People don't use gmail because of the user interface, they use it because they are locked in with their email address. New users will pick what they have heard off, or what their friends use.

<comment><USER24> Tons of people started using gmail exactly because of the user interface.

For your second point, if you really mean "locked in" (as in "my company has outsourced their email to gmail") you can always use an IMAP client.

But I guess this is just a small typo and you mean "logged in" - in which case I'm not sure I can follow? Is your point that people don't like the user interface but use it anyway because their friends use it?! Not sure I buy. If no-one forces you to use gmail, don't use it. Or, again, use an IMAP client.

<comment><USER25> Not to mention keyboard shortcuts! Navigating with my keyboard seriously saves me tons of time everyday.

<comment><USER26> Also very handy for users who can't see the mouse well or rely on a screen reader.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Based on what I've seen from this blog post, my initial impression is that I don't think I'm going to like the new Gmail UI (I haven't been able to use it, so this is based on the preview). But I'll be perfectly happy when they arrive.

One of the many reasons I switched to GMail was the fact that they didn't charge to access mail from a POP3 (and now IMAP). Neither protocol is perfect (or perhaps it's the implementation in the variety of mail apps that support it), but the bottom line is that there are limitless numbers of clients that support those protocols, which allows me to abandon the web platform if I choose to.

When my bride complains about the next Facebook UI overhaul, I always think of this. To clarify, I'm always stuck thinking of Facebook in terms of old-school online service like AOL with features that fit better in the 21st century...I get that it's not e-mail+ or e-mail-. And I appreciate that it has a powerful API, the usage of which allows me to avoid the UI overhauls for the limited feature-set that I enjoy. But for e-mail, I still prefer the provider with the most options.

Count me in as perfectly fine with the new UI changes because I don't have to care if I don't like them.

</comment><comment><USER28> Google Apps users, is there any way to permanently get rid of that black strip on the bottom right advertising the marketplace and now, the new look?

<comment><USER29> Check the element's class/id. Create a user stylesheet for your browser. Set the element to display:none. Profit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I love the use of white space and the clean looks of Gmail, but it pains me to see when "UI designers" build an interface where 20% of the screen is taken up by useless objects.

I understand Google wants me to search and to use G+, but for user's sake, could you shove all that into 1 button and make it expand on click, so I could actually use my gmail screen for something like... answering emails.

Is this too much to ask? Google, the new Yahoo!?

p.s. No, the "compact" view doesn't really solve the problem. The objects get smaller and narrower, but the top banner still takes up all the premium space.

<comment><USER31> I agree that compact view doesn't solve the problem.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3184606>

The problem are non-scrollable regions. What's next, status bar on the page and even more menus?

<comment><USER32> Non-scrollable regions containing ads and doodads are a killer for me.

Once this is forced on us, I will withdraw to a native client.

<comment><USER31> Also:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3184798>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is a very refreshing look. They've really simplified and glossed over a lot of the details of email going on underneath. I wonder if they were able to do this in a way that still has all the features of the original, or else what didn't make the cut.

</comment><comment><USER34> I absolutely love the fact that you can control the density of the emails. This was a huge deal-breaker for me with the new theme and made me go back to the old theme. I'd be more than happy to try this new look out.

<comment><USER35> Me too. I understand that the new design is visually more appealing and creates a better mood and sense of elegance for the user, but Gmail was designed for large volume email users, and it continues to be the best client for that use case, beating out every native app (at least that I've ever tried). For this type of user, packing more information on the screen is a huge usability boost. That might mean that Andy Rutledge will declare it crap and make a redux version that doesn't jab his monkey brain with a sharp stick, but it certainly doesn't mean that proportion and whitespace can't be used effectively on a more compact level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Are other Google products using the same layout engine or are they just copying the visual appearance? I'd like to have the same layout controls available in Docs, Calendar, Reader etc.

<comment><USER37> Gmail and Docs both use Closure Library

<http://code.google.com/p/closure-library/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Still won't do partial word searches.

I use Gmail's backend but I can't use something that won't find "client" in "mynewclient".

Amazing that a company known for search can't provide this simple and essential feature.

</comment><comment><USER39> Meanwhile, my Google Apps account design is stuck 3 or 4 iterations ago.

<comment><USER40> The "preview" skin is available on Google Apps.

I activated it on a new domain yesterday: <http://i.imgur.com/PoQ2F.png>

<comment><USER41> where is that to be found?

<comment><USER42> Settings > Themes

<comment><USER41> thank you :-) (stupid me)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> It looks good. But the one thing I do notice is that the screenshots they've provided in the blog don't have a strip of ads running down the right hand side of the page. I'll be interested to see what it looks like with those in.

<comment><USER44> The video shows what ads look like on the right hand side.

<comment><USER45> They also have an ad over the list of emails in the inbox. As of yet I have not seen this ad in the actual product.

<comment><USER46> That ad has been there for years. You probably turned it off and forgot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I don't like fixed position UI and scrolling within a small section. I prefer the whole page to scroll.

I am staying on the old version.

<comment><USER32> "temporarily".

If enough people hate this, they may slow the intro, but this may be the worst of all Clust __ __s, the one that fails, but is hailed as a glorious success.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> One unmentioned feature I loved is the ability to hide the chat and "invite" sidebars. On the lower left corner there's two unobtrusive buttons to toggle chat and invite (does anyone use that?) visibility.

I'm still waiting for a UI where I can just drag the components I need, a la browser's toolbars.

<comment><USER49> I have Gtalk and Tasks. I don't see why I can't put them on the same sidebar though. There should be an option for that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> The compact view looks much much nicer than the dense version of the preview theme they have now. Hopefully they'll add a few darker lines here and there too.

</comment><comment><USER51> I'm very impressed. They really solved a lot of the issues I had with preview, such as multiple views for different screen sizes/resolutions.

Overall, the highly visual approach allows some hidden but useful features to emerge for the average user. However, I'm still on the fence about the excessive padding on the individual email items.

<comment><USER52> That padding is one of the only issues I have with the new layout. They should have left an option with the classic padding.

<comment><USER53> Did you watch the video? At 0:23, they click the little gear and it gives three different padding options.

When he selects "compact", it looks like the classic padding to me.

<comment><USER52> And... I was wrong :)

I just switched to the new look and (after changing the density to "Compact") I could not notice a difference on the padding.

It was a nice surprise.

Are you working on anything related to this design?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Web-based "apps" have this great feature: updates require no work on the part of the user. And they have this terrible bug: updates require no work on the part of the user. With real (i.e. native) software, users get to decide. Important deadline approaching? Click "not now" for any and all updates.

</comment><comment><USER55> Not about GMail, but does anyone else find Google's new blog templates to be annoying?

Chrome and Firefox optimized away much of the 500msec or less it takes for the page to render, and I don't want to have to spend that time watching the loading logo instead. Plus there are unavoidable animations for every page I try to access, but they're _slow_ and make my netbook lag. I like being able to access the alternative views, but some of them seem clearly oriented towards photo blogs and turn into a pastiche of menus and grids, defeating the point of making the blog more usable for the reader (I have to try click on each one to see what it does?). /complain

<comment><USER46> I you use a mobile browser, you won't get the 0.5 sec delay, you'll immediately see "Dynamic Views are not supported on your device".

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> I mostly don't like it.

The left sidebar pops open, thats great!

However, read messages now have a lifeless grey background. The archive buttons have been replaced with icons. I can now only see half the amount of messages per screen due to the increased spacing.

Its disappointing.

<comment><USER57> Yeah, i have to say mostly when new UIs are introduced i generally like or prefer them, but this time round im not too happy.

Individual email threads are much harder to distinguish and due to the increase in information its harder to concentrate on the actual email body itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> I use labels aggressively, but I monitor the numbers next to the labels to see if I have stuff coming in rapidly. When I tried the new GMail interface, it hid a bunch of important labels, requiring me to hover over that section to check if I was getting emails from particular projects and groups of people. That broke my email workflow, so I had to switch back to the old interface.

Hopefully, the comments I sent to the GMail team didn't fall on deaf ears - <USER2> really don't want to rework how I do email.

It must be tough working on a product that is so core to people's life and work. The changes in XCode never sit well with me either.

<comment><USER59> You can drag and drop labels out of the "More" box into the main view. I don't know if there's a limit to how many labels you can do that with though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I've read the threads re: netbook but haven't seen my problem with the new look. I chose Compact for the density, but when I Reply, write a return email to someone - lo and behold, I can no longer scroll up to hit Send. It is hidden by the new icon bar - surely I am not the only netbook user with this problem? 10.2 inch screen, Gateway computer, Chrome browser...yeah.

Any ideas? I won't change this netbook to the 'new look' unless I can figure this out - guess I'll have to use Thunderbird or something. I'd rather not.

Thanks for any help.

</comment><comment><USER61> They seem to have fixed the speed issues, which was my main gripe with gmail up to this point.

F'ing terrible in the usability department, though, especially on the default super-spaced view - it makes it much harder to scan quickly, and lets you see half the number of emails in the same vertical space.

The wide open space with no border between panes is also really annoying. Adding a border-right on the folder pane via firebug/whatever brings it almost back to being bearable.

</comment><comment><USER49> I am liking the way their new design is going. In my opinion it is getting better and better. Conversations are much cleaner now and easier to read.

</comment><comment><USER62> Help!! With all the none-scrolling stuff the new design has, on my netbook I have only some 600x300 pixels left to see the actual email message.

To read the email message is the reasong I am opening Gmail!

I don't care about a static user account bar, a static search bar, a static action buttons bar, a static folder and tags sidebar, etc. All that c%#p should be scrolling! It's a web page!

Is there any fix for this in the Gmail settings?

<comment><USER62> I am serious. Is there an option in the settings to make all elements scroll again? It's not like I am the only one who prefers a small screen.

The many position:fixed elements is a major flaw in this new design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> You can use a theme thats similar to that video. Its been available in the Themes section of Gmail settings for several months.

I find it a huge improvement.

</comment><comment><USER64> Display density doesn't work in my browser (chrome on a Macbook pro) it says it only works on larger displays. Since my browser takes up all of my screen's real estate I don't understand why I am having this issue. As a side note, if you want to see a failure of customer service design, take a look at their feedback form page and count the number of unnecessary form fields.

</comment><comment><USER65> Why don't the mail message rows alternate in color?

</comment><comment><USER66> I hope there will be a way to keep the current look, all of the new themes from Google are terrible. (As many people have stated before.)

</comment><comment><USER67> If they fix the black menu back to what it is now nice easy to read white background then I'll be glad to switch.

</comment><comment><USER68> I love the new UI. The conversation view and the way the content flows together. It's just brilliant.

Only one complaint, I want to have a more loose display than the current one, I want 'Cozy' rather than 'Compact' regardless of my screen size. I should be able to change that somewhere.

<comment><USER69> Display Density is adjustable when clicking the gear icon button in the upper right for me. I keep it cozy, too.

<comment><USER70> On lower resolutions, the Comfortable and Cozy options aren't available. I much prefer the look of Comfortable but am forced to use Compact.

<comment><USER69> Ouch, that is unfortunate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> I hope they have tested this new design with some of the old "Gmail Labs" modules. I've been using the "Right-Side Chat" Labs module for a long time, and so far, using the Preview Theme, resizing my browser window sometimes causes me to lose my chat box.

</comment><comment><USER72> I was looking to disable chat from the mail view for long. This helps. Mail == Mail now!

</comment><comment><USER73> Personally I've switched to Offline Gmail in Chrome, it's super fast and minimal.

</comment><comment><USER74> The conversation view is much, much better. I can't wait to check it out.

</comment><comment><USER5> Um, does anyone know how to carry over a custom color scheme? or is it possible to create new custom colors, I don't see that option in themes...

</comment><comment><USER75> I just tried it live, and I found that when reading a message the ads on the right are really too prominent. Is it just my impression?

<comment><USER46> What is an "ad"?

<comment><USER75> I meant advertising.

By the way, I found out that that effect is very marked only when zooming in the browser. At zoom=100% the ads aren't so invasive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> I'm seeing ads now, which I have blocked for a while with AdBlock. Does anyone know how to block ads in the new gmail?

<comment><USER77> EasyList subscription. This filter rule was triggered:

        &view=ad&

<comment><USER76> I'm not sure I understand. I'm have EasyList selected (and I just updated it). I'm still seeing the ads at the very top of the inbox. Are you saying "&view=ad&" was triggered? Or that I need to add this and it will be triggered?

<comment><USER77> It was triggered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> Damn it! The new Gmail is broken for me on Firefox Nightly on Debian Squeeze AMD64. I can't open any messages!

</comment><comment><USER79> Beside losing Buzz I don't see much stuff happening. Besides, Google Reader is losing notes as well.

</comment><comment><USER80> The biggest problem with the new UI is that it is entirely new. I have to learn it all over again.

</comment><comment><USER81> The font on the 'compose' and 'send' buttons seem a little blurry to me

</comment><comment><USER38> The blog doesn't work on iPhone 3G btw.

<comment><USER82> Google came out with this "Dynamic Styles" thing for Blogger a few weeks ago, which completely broke Blogger blogs for mobile devices, with no way to disable it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> Runs slow on Firefox. Don't upgrade.

</comment><comment><USER84> I wonder what they did to break iPad flick to scroll on that blog post?

</comment><comment><USER85> > _Better search_

I seriously hope they would _FINALLY_ include some sort of sub-string search as the lack of it really makes their mail search pretty much unusable unless you know exactly what you are looking for but I have a huge mail archive that goes a good 10+ years back - and that is google we are talking about, of all companies.

I would be totally fine if they limit me to just 2 or 3 sub-string searches a day and then just grep through my mails if that's what it takes but come on people, this feature has been requested ages ago and there surely are ways to implement this without breaking your servers' backs.

</comment><comment><USER86> So how long before this shows up for Google Apps users? While I love Apps it's annoying that we're second hand users in terms of product releases.

<comment><USER87> I was somewhat surprised to learn: it's available immediately. 2 minutes after they posted on Twitter that it's now available to everyone, I followed their steps of closing Tasks and Chat windows, hit refresh, clicked the link. Done. (You may need to be on the Rapid Release track.)

<comment><USER9> I also had to close Tasks in bottom right corner, to see a button to switch to new design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> So, is this real, or is this a spoof of the mess with Google Reader?

(PS: I know whether this is real; I'm just phrasing it this way for ironic impact.)</comment>


How To Write Good Blog Posts - <AUTHOR> https://keen.io/blog/64412608076/how-to-write-good-blog-posts

<comment><USER2> This is probably some of the most generally applicable advice I've seen on how to write blog posts in the course of time I've been writing and reading. I can resonate a lot with what your friend Nate said over the course of my "writing career" if you can call it that. So, well done.

For me, I'm a written communicator at heart, so looking at a comment box or a journal and willing a series of letters to form words that represent what I would like to articulate isn't an activity that's _generally_ hard for me. But there's something about the mental block of preparing something for publication on a blog that changes the game in my head. Perhaps it's the effect my college English professor had on me, but blogging feels like I'm preparing to submit a paper to him for grading, which is good. They taught me how to evaluate my own work critically and how to assimilate and process feedback. When I'm in that mode, I do that.

But something they _didn 't_ do was ever give me a 100 on a paper. The point of this was simple: __no draft is perfect, not even the final draft __. And the important thing that I walked away with is that imperfection is ok.

If I could expound on what Nate said in the blog post, I'd emphasize the lesson I summarized above on imperfection. All too often, I catch myself measuring myself against other writers. Then when I'm reading drafts of something I'm preparing, it's too easy for me to get into the snare of saying "this isn't as good as so-and-so's post, so I shouldn't publish it." And I have to beat myself over the head and remind myself that imperfection is ok.

Imperfect writings have started and ended wars, communicated heartfelt feelings from one lover to another, and sometimes brought about common understanding where there was none. And in all likelihood, whoever "so-and-so" is at any given time, if they're a writer worth their body weight they probably thought their blog post was imperfect in some way too.

Anyway, that's just my 2 cents on what could have been added. Great blog post! :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Judging by how I just read that post, the way to write a good blog post is to embolden the first sentence of each paragraph. That way, it is easy to skim and get the general idea in 5 seconds.</comment>


Ask HN: What accounts for the update-happy nature of modern tech? - <AUTHOR> I struggle to think of an internet-connected device that I own which has not required an update in the last month. My phone (Android), my computer (Surface with Windows 10), my game console (Playstation 4), my tablet (iPad), my /light bulbs/ (Philips Hue), all needed to be temporarily bricked and to install either a security or feature update, generally without seeking my permission to do so. Also, essentially every major app on my phone. I know HN is frequented by people from across the range of specialties within hardware and software development; I'd like to hear everyone's take on why this has come to be the paradigm, and their sentiments on the matter. <comment><USER2> I'd say for one we have more connected devices, which implies a higher likelihood of needing an update at any one time. I also think people and companies are more concerned with security than they were in the past, which might influence the frequency of patches. The third is that companies have been moving to more frequent release schedules which means more frequent feature and security releases (Agile, continuous delivery, etc).</comment>


"They have a press release, we have many millions of customer" - Ballmer in 07 - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwIUEnXctuA

<comment><AUTHOR> Its also really interesting that the Symbian guy basically dismisses Android as 'yet another linux platform'.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wonder how much Microsoft have changed strategy due to Google as compared to Apple.</comment>


Twitter users are revealing the identities of white supremacist protestors - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.lu/amp/s/www.recode.net/platform/amp/2017/8/13/16140614/charlottesville-protestor-identities-twitter-yesyoureracist-white-nationalists <comment><USER2> Or to put it another way, the protesters are revealing their own identities by making their info public.

I am skeptical of how useful this is in the long run. It's therapeutic for some of my fellow leftists ("haha, this person's name is sullied for life, I imagine") but real, permanent change is less easy than this.

</comment><comment><USER3> Before anyone comes in and acts like this is wrong: attaching a face to a 'free speech' protest is perfectly OK. There's no legal penalties for saying horrific racist comments, but there are social ones.

Props to these people, however I hope there aren't any mistaken identities.

<comment><USER4> While it's hard to feel any sympathy for this particular group of nazi losers, I think Slate Star Codex makes some decent points about the dangers of this kind of behavior:

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/07/29/against-signal- boosting...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/07/29/against-signal-boosting-as- doxxing/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those wringing their hands about free speech, remember that this was a _violent_ event which resulted in one death, a dozen or two serious injuries, and lots and lots of less serious injuries.

It's one thing to call out people involved in a peaceful Nazi rally (although I don't think I'd be opposed to that either), and white another to call out people involved in fighting and killing peaceful protestors.

</comment><comment><USER6> _"I understand the photo has a very negative connotation," he said. "But I hope that the people sharing the photo are willing to listen that I'm not the angry racist they see in that photo."_

Apparently, racists do not know they are racist.

</comment><comment><USER7> If you're comfortable enough marching in public then I would have assume you'd have no issue with people knowing you were at that event.

</comment><comment><USER8> Two problems: suppressing dumb ideas lends them unwarranted credibility, and in their fervor they will almost certainly victimize innocent people.

<comment><USER9> I don't see this as suppressing dumb ideas. Quite the opposite -- it's fueling a national debate about those ideas. These people are getting much more of a platform than they'd otherwise have, and I disagree that it gives them credibility. It gives them warranted (and necessary) visibility, juxtaposed against a social backlash, which hurts their credibility.

To your second point: what makes you think doxxing them is going to motivate them to victimize people that they wouldn't otherwise victimize?</comment></comment>


Show HN: a17t, a deeply customizable atomic design library that's pure CSS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/milesmcc/a17t/ <comment><AUTHOR> Some CSS frameworks come prepackaged with all sorts of components that are convenient at first but quickly become limiting. Utility frameworks like Tailwind are awesome, but can be difficult start using on their own.

a17t tries to get the balance right. Instead of providing all-inclusive, opinionated components (like jumbotrons, navbars, and menus), a17t provides common single-class elements in a default (but easily customizable) style.

Other features: Accessibility is a core focus; Designed to integrate well with Tailwind CSS; Customizable via CSS variables; more explained at the documentation site, [https://a17t.miles.land](https://a17t.miles.land)

Any and all feedback is appreciated — I built this to scratch my own itch, but hope it might be useful for you all too!</comment>


How to set up Powershell if you've been using *nix for 20 years - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mikemaccana/powershell-profile/blob/master/README.md <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN, author here. This is actually my own personal $profile, plus the checklist of things I need to be productive on a Windows 10 box.

As you can read, I know my way around *nix - but I like Powershell's seperation of content from presentation (basically I use 'select' rather than sed/grep/awk) and native Windows-ness.

The config lets me use stuff I expect - emacs style keybindings (like bash uses), regular slash, iterm colors, a tabbed terminal, etc. Pull requests or suggestions are welcomed!

</comment><comment><USER2> I've been using *nix for the last 40 years, and I really don't want to go anywhere near Windows. I'll install Win7 if I want to play a game, but that's it.

</comment><comment><USER3> still less practical than a vm

<comment><AUTHOR> Did you read the article?

Particularly "Minimum Powershell concepts to learn before you rant about how much you hate Powershell"</comment></comment>


Which version of Microsoft Word runs best on Linux in 2020? - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/winehq/comments/hgr6a9/which_version_of_microsoft_word_runs_best_on/ <comment><USER2> May not answer the question, but using LaTeX and producing PDFs from it works best for me. Also, it is free (as in libre) software.

<comment><USER3> Latex is also very old and a huge pain to debug when things go wrong.

I would love to see a complete office package based on some markdown language. It would be simple to understand and use.

Speaking of markdown, can someone please release an updated version of RST? The kernel folks use it for documentation so I'm surprised no one has yet tried to improve the spec and the tools.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that would be great. Something with the simplicity of markdown that saved .md files, but allowed you to edit tables in a typical gui fashion.

<comment><USER4> Something like LyX for Markdown? I'd be surprised if it didn't exist yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seemed to only cover using Microsoft Word for Windows on Linux, rather than the official port of Microsoft Word to Linux, for the Android on Chromebook distribution. I've used the Microsoft Word locally on my Chromebook and it was okay.

<comment><USER6> Is that not just a native port of the new Office Online suite? They don't include the full feature set of the original MS Office, which might be a deal- breaker for many.</comment></comment>


Show HN: ScaleDrone, push messaging that makes sense - <AUTHOR> https://www.scaledrone.com/ <comment><USER2> The usecase for this is not clear to me. Syncing is already done via the cloud, sharing as well. It's cool, but what's more to it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Most users use it for adding push capabilities to their existing software. Eg you have a web app that uses a REST backend but you want updates to be forced into the browser instead of refreshing the page.

There are also those who use it for chat rooms, live analytics and event MMOs.</comment></comment>


Something that took us 12 months to learn... - <AUTHOR> http://blog.clutterme.com/2009/01/something-that-took-us-12-months-to.html

<comment><USER2> To paraphrase jwz: "How does this software get me paid?"</comment>


Skype opens competition for community redesign of Mac client - <AUTHOR> http://appleheadlines.com/2011/04/02/skype-contest-asks-everyone-else-to-fix-their-mac-version-macbook-air-and-ipad-2-goes-to-the-winner/

<comment><USER2> I was going to say this is a good idea, but after downloading what they give you, they don't let you change what people had the most problems with--the window layout, etc. Seems more and more like a publicity ploy to me.

</comment><comment><USER3> Publicity stunt. CSS cannot change the window size.

Skype need to provide a download of version 2.8 on their site until they have fixed 5.0. A "classic mode" will suffice.</comment>


Stackless Python-like coroutines in Scheme. - <AUTHOR>

After some time of doing only toy tests and book exercises, I'm getting deeper into Scheme for a real application.  One of the things I missed was Stackless Python's simple to use coroutine API.  In Scheme you have
- raw continuations, which I find a bit too wild and low-level for my current purposes, or
- full-fledged preemptive threading systems, which seemed way too complex for my needs.  Besides, these are implementation specific, and I didn't want to marry any implementation yet.
So I decided to give it a try and roll my own on plain R5RS (I'm sorry it's quite verbose as a result.  I may reduce noise with macros in the future, but this is my first shot at it).  It was easier than I was afraid, and great fun!
If you are into Scheme/Lisp, please tell me what you think about it. [Edit: I'm especially interested in comments on the API and semantics. This is more frugal than Stackless's, but I don't miss anything worthy. Do you?]
http://pastebin.com/ff732013
NOTE: This is just a one day hack; use it at your own risk.  If you are interested in getting future versions of this, just write me at the address in the profile and I'll ping you when I'm confident it's reliable. <comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for keeping talking to myself here, but since this got saved I thought I'd post a bugfix:

<http://pastebin.com/d631795cd>

My original code was not really R5RS compliant: continuation objects must be called with exactly one argument, unless the receiving end is explicitly expecting otherwise. Gambit C didn't complain, but Chicken did. Now this runs on both.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A highlighted version so you can avoid the noise on first reading and go straight to the meat:

<http://pastebin.com/f774fd6c1>

I forgot to add before: if you have questions, I'm eager to reply them. If you have advice, I'm eager to hear it.</comment>


CA Burns: Mayor Breed Must Lead on Cutting Car Emissions - <AUTHOR> https://sf.streetsblog.org/2018/11/27/guest-commentary-mayor-breed-needs-to-make-a-real-effort-to-reduce-car-emissions/ <comment><USER2>
      she has no position on congestion pricing

... which would require state law changes anyway.</comment>


Corsica's 'fox cat': On the trail of what may be a new species - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2019-06-corsica-cat-fox-trail-species.html <comment><USER2> Interesting that it might be related to the African wild cat, and thus to the Sardinian one ("su gatu areste") as well.

<comment><USER3> Domestic cats are also descendants of African Wildcats with some divergences like not quite as long fangs and less human pleasant voices (in addition to attitude differences).

I am not saying they aren't a distinct species but I wonder what separates them from ferals. Time and genetic distance making them their own distinct collection of features not usually found?

Mere interbreedability doesn't work too well as evidenced by the hybrid domestic cat breeds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is it bigger or smaller than a maine coon?

<comment><USER5> Smaller.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article mentions there are 16 cats, isn't that far too few for a genetically healthy population?

<comment><USER7> 16 they know about. Giving how fast cats can multiply if unchecked, I expect the actual population to be larger.

<comment><USER6> Considering they're thought to arrived several thousand years ago, are they on the way out, or is this just from one town.

Cheetahs had a genetic bottleneck of 11 individuals, severely constraining genetic diversity, which they may not naturally recover from.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> type-2 so fox-cat?

</comment><comment><USER8> I have always though cats were super interesting. They are still so bound to their natural mindset if you want, and I have never experienced any cat being as pet-like as dogs.

They have an interesting mind and can be super funny to observe, because of their natural patterns.

Great story this

<comment><USER9> You can train cats to be more pet like, but you need to start at a really young age. (Hold them a lot as a kitten, etc) People also regularly train cats to do tricks, but that's more dependent on the cat.

<comment><USER10> I did this to my cat, he's the most dog-like friendly cat ever, but it's still not the same as a dog. They are much more clever and manipulative than dogs when it comes to getting what they want, which is both amusing and annoying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In typical cat fashion the cat-fox seems very un-enthused about being held

<comment><USER12> I wonder what evolutionary pressure produced my intense desire to pick up kitty cats and bury my face in their tummies if possible. Because reflecting on it, it does seem like an odd behavior.

<comment><USER13> Toxoplasmosis - a parasite cats carry that can change your behaviour.

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-cats- responsi...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-cats-responsible- for-ldquo-cat-ladies-rdquo/)

<comment><USER14> Probably has more to do with how humans are wired to react to their "cute" or baby-like appearances, e.g. large eyes and heads.

I can also say I've always wanted to bury my head in cat tummies, and I recently tested negative for Toxoplasmosis. AFAIK, the infection is more correlated with making men more introverted and depressed and women more extroverted and manic.

<comment><USER15> I continue to satisfy my snuggle urge with the rest of you all in spite of 2 out of 3 @home kitty's reaction, latching onto the sides of my head with claws fully extended with vigorous rabbit kicks thrown in because why not? Since I keep doing it I think I need a toxo test, ECT, or something. Is the test for toxoplasmosis a blood test that requires a prescription?

<comment><USER14> Again, I don't believe there's any evidence Toxoplasmosis makes people irrationally interested in cuddling with cats. I had a blood test done at my doctor's office to investigate a swollen lymph node and they included the toxo test on the panel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So, not related to the fox. Also, not a new species but rather a probable new subspecies. Other than that, the title is accurate.

<comment><USER17> Common names of animals often have common names of unrelated animals, (elephant beetle, dog fish, tiger shark... none of these are hybrids ;) ).

Also I heard recently that a fox is cat software running on dog hardware. Seems true.

<comment><USER18> Also, in French bat is called "chauve-souris", which can literally be translated as "bald mouse".

<comment><USER19> I think I have a new favorite false etymology, for "chauvinist".

<comment><USER20> The actual etymology is pretty interesting:

[https://www.etymonline.com/word/chauvinism](https://www.etymonline.com/word/chauvinism)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Hey, I know a house cat when I see one. You're not fooling anyone with your "science"!

<comment><USER21> Sure hope I'm being downvoted for not being funny. Am afraid that in today's world, some of you really think I'm anti-science. Scary!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Considering cats are the subject of some of the most ancient memes and foxes are arguably trending in their meme status... Could this new hybrid revolutionize memes as we know it? We live in exciting times

<comment><USER23> The article didn't mention anything about them being a hybrid species. And I'm pretty sure they are a feline species that earned the name based on looks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I feel a lot of pity for all wild cats, because their domestic cousins have it soo good. This cat-fox in a remote swamp in a remote island is dearly missing out big in the perks of civilization. Then again, we even let people do that ...

<comment><USER25> Remote island?!?!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> >While resembling a domestic cat in some ways, the ring-tailed feline measures 90 centimetres (35 inches) from head to tail, has "very wide" ears, short whiskers and "highly developed" canine teeth.

I am sceptical. Why didn't they show a picture of the canine teeth? I would imagine that feature would be the most exciting phenotype to show off. The ears don't look "very wide" to me either. Not that I am an expert. I am just surprised that they did not provide more pictures to backup their claims.

<comment><USER27> The second picture shows how they are measuring canine teeth.

<comment><USER26> Wow, I have blinders on today. Thanks for pointing that out.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A GTK+ 1Password App for Linux - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/jbreams/gonepass

<comment><USER2> 1password's data format is publicly documented and a variety of unofficial ways to access data have been created. For example on the command line there are:

Python: [https://pypi.python.org/pypi/1pass](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/1pass)

Node: [https://github.com/oggy/1pass](https://github.com/oggy/1pass)

And the creator of 1Password, AglieBits officially includes 1PasswordAnywhere for access via HTML/javascript:

[https://guides.agilebits.com/1password- mac/5/en/topic/1passw...](https://guides.agilebits.com/1password- mac/5/en/topic/1passwordanywhere)

<comment><USER3> 1PasswordAnywhere is a joke. They are selling a first class desktop password management experience and that is not it.

<comment><USER2> Not sure what you mean by this. 1PasswordAnywhere is not intended to replace the apps. It is intended to give you portable access to your passwords. I think it does a pretty good job of that. Replacing all of the features that required writing to the database (and dealing with sync) in a in-browser javascript app is asking a bit much.

To start with, you don't have write access to the file system. That is a pretty big technical block.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What are the advantages over Keepass?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you already have a bunch of 1Password data, this lets you read it. Keepass is definitely more feature-rich than my thing, but 1Password is cross-platform and has mobile apps - and most importantly, I already use it for everything! I used 1Password extensively on my Mac - and when I switched to Linux on the desktop, it was the only thing missing, so I wrote this.

<comment><USER5> I use keepass in Linux, Windows and Android and i think there is an iOS version as well.

<comment><USER6> Yes, MiniKeePass works quite well on iOS, with Dropbox and owncloud sync (and I presume others, but those are the two I've used.) Oh, and MacPass for OSX.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is great. Even being read-only is pretty good if I can figure out a way to sync to my Mac across the network. I'll give this a shot when I get home. My previous attempt was migrating from 1Password to pass, but that did not go so well. I'll let you know if it builds on FreeBSD, since that's what I use for all my desktops. Thanks for making this.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1Password does dropbox syncing. The intended use-case is to point this at your dropbox sync'd password vault. The actual password vault is just a bunch of json files though, so if you have those files sync'd it should work.

<comment><USER8> Ugh. There should be no reason why there is a copy of passwords (encrypted or not) in the cloud.

At the expense of not being integrated, I use BT Sync for this purpose instead. Works fine for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> i hope this works and so other people have been waiting for this for years.

<comment><USER2> Looks like it is read only. The same for all other such tools of which I am aware.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm working on adding write support. The structure of the encrypted data in 1Password is kind of inconsistent, so it's not as simple as just updating fields in the JSON documents, but I don't think it should be that hard to make it writable.

<comment><USER10> Indeed - I've documented what I've learned thus far at [https://github.com/robertknight/passcards/blob/master/lib/ag...](https://github.com/robertknight/passcards/blob/master/lib/agile_keychain_entries.ts)

I did create a test vault with every item that 1Password v4.x supported but you have probably come across additional fields that I've missed.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What technical problems must be solved for blockchain to be fundamental? - <AUTHOR> The title is lacking due to length restrictions (any suggestions for better phrasing are welcomed).
Bitcoin is more than a decade old. Technological growth can be exponential, which makes me question if there will be an explosion soon due to technological breakthroughs in the blockchain space/industry (or did/am I miss/missing it?). I'm curious from a technical (and perhaps economic perspective) rather than political in an effort to focus upon the engineering effort that is required and could be possible without economic or political intervention. [i.e. improvements in transactions per second, improvements in energy consumption, improvements in ...]
1. What technical problems must be overcome in order for blockchain technology to a fundamental platform for society?
2. What are the potential solutions to these technical problems?
3. And how close are those solutions to being attained? <comment><USER2> > What technical problems must be solved for blockchain to be fundamental?

It's not fundamental because it doesn't solve fundamental problems.

I don't think that's particularly a technical issue.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you think there will be any such problems in the future — problems that will emerge from the growing complexity of society?

<comment><USER2> There are definitely problems that will emerge from the growing complexity of society, but it's not obvious that blockchain will be the indispensable solution to any of them, much less be so in some way that will make it a fundamental platform rather than just one amo g many common tools.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> While there are technical blockers...

The real blockers are human behavior and expectations. "Take down that murder video!" "If I lose my debit card, I lose money?!"

It's a cool toy, not really needed though</comment>


John Gruber: WebKit Performance on iPhone OS X 2.0 - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/2008/07/webkit_performance_iphone <comment><USER2> I'm not sure if they're running SquirrelFish (<http://webkit.org/blog/189/announcing-squirrelfish/>) yet, but that could explain the increased performance.

If they're _not_ running SquirrelFish, then _wow_ , once they do it will be even better.</comment>


"Google will buy Twitter" - <AUTHOR> http://seb2point0.com/web-20/google-will-buy-twitter <comment><USER2> So that Google can neglect it into atrophy the same way it did with Dodgeball and Jaiku? I doubt it.

<comment><USER3> And GrandCentral.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What would motivate a company like Google to pay top dollar for a niche, one- product company with no revenue like Twitter? The smart thing for an acquirer to do would be to wait until prospective targets are tapped out and can hear the wolves at the door. It isn't like there's a lot of potential suitors right now. The era of large acquisitions is over.

</comment><comment><USER5> Twitter snubbed Facebook. And as far as tech media pundits are concerned, _you do not do that_. Furthermore, can we PLEASE stop with the acquisition speculation?

<comment><USER6> From what I could tell Facebook was only offering their stock not cash. I can't blame Twitter for turning them down.

Also, why would google care in the first place that they snubbed facebook (or any other purchaser for that matter)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why? What would Google get from this? That they couldn't get from just indexing Twitter on their own, I mean.

</comment><comment><USER8> Unless twitter start using python? LOL</comment>


Believing in Consistency [of Arithmetics] - <AUTHOR> https://thehighergeometer.wordpress.com/2019/06/20/believing-in-in-consistency/ <comment><USER2> Here is a summary for those who do not know much set theory.

Thanks to Gödel, we know that the Peano axioms for arithmetic cannot prove themselves to be consistent. The question is how much more do you have to add to that to prove that it is?

The answer turns out to be rather cute.

Consider the set of finite tuples of non-negative integers with a comparison that in Python looks like first comparing the length, and then comparing them in lexicographic order. That is, () < (0) < (1) < (2) < ... < (0, 0) < (0,1) < (0,2) < ... < (1, 0) < (1, 1) < (1, 2) < ... (0, 0, 0) < (0, 0, 1) < ... and so on. If this set is _well-ordered_ , then PA is consistent. What well- ordered means is that a sequence of elements has to hit bottom in a finite number of steps. It may take a lot of steps, but it has to be finite.

Why would we expect that? Well bottom here is the empty tuple, (). There is only 1 so there is only one descending sequence and it hits bottom. (Well, duh.)

It is easy to write induction on a single variable to show that the tuples of length at most 1, that is () or (n), will hit bottom in a finite number of steps. In fact in no more than n+1 steps.

But what happens when we add tuples of length 2? Now it gets interesting. Consider the tuples of the form (n, m). Assuming that we've proven well- orderedness up to (n-1, _) we can do an induction proof to prove well- orderedness for (n, m). But then that is the induction step in a double induction proof of well-orderedness for (n, m).

Similarly well-orderedness for length 3 requires a triple induction.

And for length k requires a k-fold induction proof.

And so the full proof of well-orderedness cannot be written out in PA. Because it requires an infinite series of induction proofs. But they are all exactly of the same, very believable, form. And if you believe that k-fold induction is valid for every arbitrary k, then you can prove that any crazy arithmetic results that can be proven by the Peano Axioms will never create a contradiction.

I do so believe. :-)

<comment><USER3> Author here :-)

There's two layers to it, and you've described the first one. The argument you give about tuples of non-negative integers is what implies the consistency of PRA or Primitive Recursive Arithmetic (roughly: the finitary, computable part of arithmetic). This argument is done in a system that is the weakest that Gödel's theorem applies to, but you really have to start assuming a small amount of consistency somewhere. With consistency of PRA under your belt, you can then trust the proof that induction over the set of finite trees implies the consistency of Peano Arithmetic, which is done in PRA.

At that point you then need to make a second leap intuitive, non-formal argument for being able to do induction over the set of finite trees (there is a canonical ordering on these). So no only does one have to worry about height induction, but also induction over width at each level of the trees, so it's genuinely more complicated. Chow gives an argument (to which I link) in terms of Turing machines outputting descending sequences of trees as to why you should think this reasonable.

So it's all very interesting.

<comment><USER2> What is the canonical ordering on the set of trees?

Given how quickly the Goodstein sequence explodes, the "finite" in these cases may be very, very large...

<comment><USER3> "An order on the set of finite rooted trees is defined recursively: we first order the subtrees joined to the root in decreasing order, and then use lexicographic order on these ordered sequences of subtrees. In this way the set of all finite rooted trees becomes a well-ordered set which is order- isomorphic to ε0." ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epsilon_numbers_(mathematics)#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epsilon_numbers_\(mathematics\)#Representation_of_'%22%60UNIQ --postMath-00000028-QINU%60%22'_by_rooted_trees))

and yes, growth rates of fast-growing functions are an important facet of this analysis.

EDIT: you should think of a rooted tree as coding an ordinal written in Cantor normal form ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinal_arithmetic#Cantor_norm...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinal_arithmetic#Cantor_normal_form)) using only ordinals less than or equal to omega.

In fact, here's a nice thesis that sets it out: [https://folk.uio.no/alfredb/Masteroppgave%20Alfred%20Bratter...](https://folk.uio.no/alfredb/Masteroppgave%20Alfred%20Bratterud%20v2.pdf)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: "Strokes" – Chinese calligraphy worksheet generator - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/d33tah/strokes <comment><AUTHOR> I worked on this project for a while so far. Any feedback is welcome! Especially if anything is not clear to you - it will be super valuable to know if there's anything in README that needs improving.</comment>


How To Grow A Twitter Audience - <AUTHOR> http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/8-simply-steps-to-growing-a-quality-twitter-following/

<comment><USER2> 20 messages a day is intrusive. I get roughly 20 a day from Roger Ebert --- who I admire greatly --- and am constantly evaluating whether to give up and unfollow him.

The thing that makes Twitter attractive to me is the humanity of it, and the balance it strikes between blog-style publishing and IRC-style chatting. You break that balance with regularly scheduled business updates.

But then, what do I know? Maybe these tactics "work" to build new users up from 3 followers to 400.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm so glad to see social media articles that include actual tactics. Everybody knows the "strategy" to social media is "engagement" and "conversation" and it's refreshing to actually be presented with a proposed tactical plan.</comment>


PostUp Buys Twitter And Facebook Application EchoFon - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/05/postup-buys-twitter-and-facebook-application-echofon/

<comment><USER2> Anybody know how much they paid?</comment>


Feynman Lectures on Physics now free online - <AUTHOR> http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/ <comment><USER2> Feynman lectures on QED:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvl6TBGEoO0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvl6TBGEoO0)

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

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF25Lwt73fg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF25Lwt73fg)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtK6FdTg9HU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtK6FdTg9HU)

<comment><USER3> I have to disable safety mode to watch these? WTF?

<comment><USER4> I don't know what "safety mode" is, but I didn't need to disable anything to watch the videos.

<comment><USER5> It's an optional Youtube setting.

[https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/174084?hl=en](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/174084?hl=en)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great! This part kind of surprises me though:

> _However, we want to be clear that this edition is only free to read online, > and this posting does not transfer any right to download all or any portion > of The Feynman Lectures on Physics for any purpose._

I know it doesn't actually mean anything in practice, but still, I'm shaking my head in disbelief that there's still people out there clinging to this mentality. Aside from the fact that it's fundamentally technically impossible to read something online without downloading it first.

<comment><USER7> So we cannot not scrape this to see how many words are in each chapter, how the technical vocabulary changes over topics, or perform an analysis on connected keywords...

<comment><USER8> Well, If you're going on the definition of download as mentioned above you could write a javascript program to do it and run it on the webpages while they're still in browser.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wonderful news but particularly sickening for me as I fished out £130 for the hardback volumes last year!

Absolutely great books however!

I've learned a lot already from those books.

Also, the "For the Practical Man" (algebra, geometry, trig, arithemtic) series of books on mathematics that Feynman started his career with. They are hard to get hold of and expensive but the calculus book is wonderful if incredibly dense and written in an early 1900's style!

Those, a cheap Casio calculator, a box of pencils and some school exercise books have taught me more than a university degree and years of industry experience.

Edit: found a legitimate PDF of "Calculus for the practical man" [http://physsocyork.co.uk/notes/J.%20E.%20Thopmson-- Calculus%...](http://physsocyork.co.uk/notes/J.%20E.%20Thopmson-- Calculus%20for%20the%20practical%20man.pdf)

<comment><USER10> I do not regret buying the hardcover copies for one second. I prefer reading stuff ilke this on paper - digital makes a good reference for quick checking of facts but I get a better, deeper understanding of it when I sit down and read it on paper at a desk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd love to buy the PDFs, but they're DRMed and I refuse to rent ebooks.

I guess I could buy them and then download the "pirate" versions from somewhere.

Instead, I'll stick with my hardcopy edition.

</comment><comment><USER12> Wow - this is awesome. Anybody interested in helping me map out a dependency graph of the concepts in the Feynman Lectures?

<comment><USER13> If you did that it'd be super awesome. Maybe something like [http://www.metacademy.org/about](http://www.metacademy.org/about) but for physics?

</comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady Is this worth reading for someone without a particular need to understand physics in depth? What I mean is if I take the time to read these will I learn anything useful to someone not pursuing a career in physics or related field?

<comment><USER14> I don't know about _useful_ \-- physics is not currently as useful to a programmer as, say, probability theory -- but I'd recommend volume 1 to anyone ready to follow it, just for the mind-stretching. Volume 2 is longer, harder, and less different in its approach to its main topic, electromagnetism. Volume 3 is short, unique, and doesn't depend too much on Volume 2 -- I was able to profit from it without mastering volume 2. (Nowadays there probably are better intros to quantum mechanics, though. I don't think there was any one really good intro when I studied it back in the 80s. The most enlightening were Feynman vol. 3, Dirac's _Principles_ , and another whose authors I've forgotten.)

Added: There's only one other introductory physics text by a historically first-rank physicist, and that was Maxwell in the 19th century. (Maybe there were earlier ones, like Euler's books on mechanics, which I haven't read. Einstein's _Relativity_ was a popularization like Feynman's _QED_ or _The Character of Physical Law_ rather than like the Feynman lectures. Newton's _Principia_ has also been used as an intro text, which seems hilariously inappropriate.) The lectures are also unusually full of the this-is-how-a- physicist-thinks thing which is hard to pin down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Disappointed it's explicitly not for download, but it's still excellent to be able to have access to all of these.

<comment><USER16> Hopefully some talented soul will write a script to convert these HTML files into mobie, epub and PDF.

<comment><USER17> From the landing page:

"However, we want to be clear that this edition is only free to read online, and this posting does not transfer any right to download all or any portion of The Feynman Lectures on Physics for any purpose."

<comment><USER18> They don't know what the word "download" means. This statement is nonsense.

<comment><USER19> "Download", as used in practice on the internet when referring to documents generally means copying the whole thing to your computer such that it can be used there without further internet access.

It generally does not include temporary transfer of small parts of the document for immediate reading, except when the focus of the discussion is about the underlying mechanics of the transfer.

<comment><USER18> This supposed duality is nonsense. A change of cache settings in your browser amounts to the same result. There's no such thing as a "temporary transfer", and I think we should not entertain the notion.

<comment><USER20> I don't see how it's any different from time-shifting with VHS. In this case, you're just using a longer-term "temporary" format (epub, mobi, pdf) which allows you to peruse the website later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> every now and then i go into the library and read a chapter out of my hardcover set of these. my kids do the "geeez dad" thing when i make them sit with me and look at them.

classics.. to be sure....

edit: i almost feel like these shouldn't be something that gets digitized.....this knowledge and its presentation belongs in a tactile medium...

<comment><USER22> The plural of anecdote is data, so FWIW I'm exactly the opposite: not just for textbooks, but even for hardcover _literature_ books I have right there in my bookshelf, I often end up digging up some PDF or Google Books version regardless. I guess I miss the scrolling/zooming, plus all the meta-textual, cross-referencing stuff like having multiple copies of the book in different sections side by side, easy access to references and definitions, etc.

What one finds 'classical' is highly relative: remember Socrates famously despised books as a degrading and pernicious medium, for one [1].

[1] [http://wondermark.com/socrates-vs- writing/](http://wondermark.com/socrates-vs-writing/)

<comment><USER23> Socrates' ideas, or rather Plato's representations thereof, belong to a cultural context radically different from our own and have absolutely no relevance. Greece was undergoing a transition from orality to literacy at the time. It was also in the early stages of actual educational institutions. What the distribution of a few manuscripts in that context meant relates to nothing in our modern world.

Not to be a jerk about it, but the misuse of history is characteristic of very pernicious rhetoric.

<comment><USER24> Books are clearly worse in virtually every context than one on one dialog with the author.

The advantage of contact with people separated in space or time seem less meaningful at the time. But, venerating books over one on one contact is a huge mistake.

<comment><USER25> > Books are clearly worse in virtually every context than one on one dialog > with the author.

This is not the case with fiction or poetry, where what is communicated is often precisely what cannot be communicated socially or even explicitly. The experiences of both writing and reading are often in a different realm altogether than those of speaking and listening face to face -- one is not a watered down version of the other. They have different qualities.

And even in the case of scientific and mathematical exposition, where your statement is more often true, there are many exceptions. For example, I think of professors I've had who could write lucidly but were poor teachers, both in the classroom and in office hours. Either their social skills stood in the way of their communication, or their verbal skills were not as good as their written ones. They needed time and solitude to express their thoughts clearly.

<comment><USER24> People can recite books just fine, let alone poetry. Granted, it's something of a lost skill, but one on one interactions are not limited to dialogs even if they may enhance exposition.

So, you gain absolutely nothing by writing the spoken word down as a skilled orator can speak with a nuteral tone when desired but the written word can't add inflection.

<comment><USER26> Sometimes deliberate ambiguity is part of the art. (Also, on a more practical level, books are better at random access.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> These books show more than anything else why Feynman is so revered among physicists as a teacher. An introductory course in physics, simple yet demanding, and shot through with Feynman's unique approach and personality.

<comment><USER28> Feynman actually found that the lectures kind of flopped as a semesters courses. It was too intense, IIRC.

<comment><USER10> That's correct. Having said that, they're a fantastic refresher for someone who has studied all of this at the high school / university level and wants to get a crash course. Feynmann loved his technical crash courses and these lectures show that he has a mastery of distilling out all of the details and leaving none of the chaff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Just chapter 1 contains answers to many questions that I've had on the back of my mind.. Why does water ice expand when it melts? If water ice is a crystalline structure, how can it vary in temperature (e.g. -5 degrees to -10 degrees). A very good read.

<comment><USER30> Perhaps you misspoke or I'm not understanding correctly what you mean but from the book:

"Another thing we can see from Fig. 1–4 is why ice shrinks when it melts. The particular crystal pattern of ice shown here has many "holes" in it, as does the true ice structure. When the organization breaks down, these holes can be occupied by molecules. Most simple substances, with the exception of water and type metal, expand upon melting, because the atoms are closely packed in the solid crystal and upon melting need more room to jiggle around, but an open structure collapses, as in the case of water."

<comment><USER29> I misspoke, I meant shrinks.. thanks for the heads up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Project Tuva has a great series of lectures Feynman gave around that time [http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/](http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/)

<comment><USER32> Silverlight only. Too bad MS cares more about pushing their proprietary technology than sharing important historical / educational material.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> How does this compare to Susskind's "The Theoretical Minimum"?

<comment><USER34> Susskind's is much shorter and goes into very little detail. It's really intended to give you a foundation for learning physics, while Feynmann's is meant to teach you lots of physics.

<comment><USER35> The Feynman lectures certainly will teach you a lot, but I think it would be a fairly trying textbook for learning a lot of the material for the first time. Among other things, a very serious deficiency for self-education is a complete lack of problems to work (which just reflects that these really were lectures).

<comment><USER34> What would you recommend for self-education?

<comment><USER35> That's a tough question. One of the most appealing things about the Feynman lectures is the breadth and how self-contained it is. I don't think there are really good analogues for that. The closest thing I can think of is one of the monster first-year physics tomes like Halliday and Resnick. That will teach you much of the basics (large chunks of Vol. 1 and 2 of the Feynman lectures), has huge numbers of problems, but it is of course less fun. It is also probably comparably or more expensive.

Going much further than that gets tricky, because you will usually need more development in math in concert with the physics. The omnibus "engineering mathematics" type books will cover a lot of it but I don't really like them. Boas's _Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences_ would be something I would look at. For more detailed looks at electromagnetism and quantum mechanics, I (and many others I know) really liked David Griffiths's textbooks. The Feynman lectures make an excellent supplement to these for the different perspective and interesting physical insights.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Don't forget the audio is out there too!

<comment><USER37> Is it actually possible to learn this through audio? With equations and so forth I would imagine it being rather hard. Do you have any experience with it?

<comment><USER36> Yes I have the audio. No, it is no substitute for the book. The audio is of the lectures. The books are based on the lectures. It's just nice to have the audio to go along so you can hear his personality.

<comment><USER37> Yeah I could see how that would be beneficial. And I guess that it could work for repetition as well. Where did you get the audio?

<comment><USER36> Well, the first rule of * is you do not talk about *.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> It is awesome how while the page is loading you see stuff like this:

"Now if we multiply Eq. (41.19) by [math], [math]. We want the time average of [math], so let us take the average of the whole equation, and study the three terms. Now what about [math] times the force?"

Soo... am I going to need math skills to understand this stuff?

<comment><USER39> Yes. Calculus was basically invented to solve physics problems.

<comment><USER40> Honestly, I feel that Calc should be taught way earlier, the way that physics is taught in school feels rather incomplete. I mean without calculus, is quite difficult to understand physics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> An offline version of the website is still floating around the Internet space.

</comment><comment><USER42> Thanks for the material. Anyone working towards translating the material?

</comment><comment><USER43> Has anyone completed all of the 3 parts? How much time did it take you ?

<comment><USER44> It's generally a three semester to a full two year sequence at most universities. You can of course go faster or slower depending on your own capacity to self-study and learn, but most bright people will probably fall somewhere in that spread to get a solid grasp of the total contents.

That said, it's always helpful at first to skim through and get a surface understanding of the whole picture before you dive in and try to understand it all. You can probably complete a surface scan like that in a few weeks or months. I studied these becomes along with my high school physics course and completed the books in about a year, but I was spending double the usual amount of time on this stuff. As a high school student, I didn't have anything better to do, but as an adult I'd expect it to take me two dedicated years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> One of the rare cases of "internet done right".

</comment><comment><USER46> Great lecture, this very useful :) to all fresher</comment>


Forensics expert says FBI to use NAND mirroring to crack terrorist's iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.macworld.com/article/3047542/ios/forensics-expert-says-fbi-to-use-nand-mirroring-to-crack-terrorists-iphone.html <comment><USER2> Already better-reported yesterday:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11336155](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11336155)

Here's the direct link to Zdziarski's blog entry explaining this:

[http://www.zdziarski.com/blog/?p=5966](http://www.zdziarski.com/blog/?p=5966)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, those are better and the comment thread is really interesting.</comment></comment>


Mayor Pledges Wi-Fi Across London by 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://prigg.thisislondon.co.uk/2010/05/boris-pledges-a-wifi-london-by-2012.html

<comment><USER2> Wow, I didnt know Tim berners-Lee invented the Internet!</comment>


Tribute to Vladimir Arnold (2012) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.ams.org/notices/201203/rtx120300378p.pdf <comment><USER2> "Development of mathematics resembles a fast revolution of a wheel: sprinkles of water are flying in all directions. Fashion—it is the stream that leaves the main trajectory in the tangential direction. These streams of epigone works attract the most attention, and they constitute the main mass, but they inevitably disappear after a while because they parted with the wheel. To remain on the wheel, one must apply the effort in the direction perpendicular to the main stream."

<comment><USER3> that's the most creative metaphor I've ever read

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm reading him now (Dynamics, statistics and projective geometry of Galois fields) and find the ideas likable. He talks about dynamic systems whose state spaces are finite fields, for instance the geometric progression of the primitive element (the powers of a multiplicative group generator). "The resulting theory is some number-theoretic finite version of the ergodic theory of toric automorphisms where the chaoticity and the mixing properties of the progressions A^k have been studied for volume-preserving automorphisms A of the continuous torus T^n" He used the nice fact that finite state space discrete dynamics are described by unions of affluent rivers in an attraction basin leading to limiting cycles. He would have loved messing with python Jupiter notebooks having been guided by paper-and-pencil explorations himself.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you enjoyed the article, do dig out the memoir that he wrote while recovering from a cycling accident. [http://www.springer.com/gb/book/9783540287346](http://www.springer.com/gb/book/9783540287346)

For the story on the fish, you'll need to get the book.

</comment><comment><USER6> That was wonderful, thank you. In my (very basic) mathematical travels, VI Arnold, like Conway and Thurston, is a name that keeps popping up everywhere.</comment>


Lets admit the iPad is an iLetDown - <AUTHOR> http://siculars.posterous.com/lets-admit-the-ipad-is-an-iletdown

<comment><USER2> The iPad is optimised for these three things; simplicity, battery life and cost.

Multitasking and background apps kill battery life. Root access and other desktop features aren't simple. More disk space would be expensive -- being flash memory. Unless the author is suggesting a spinning drive, which will kill battery life.

These are completely valid complaints, but it helps to understand that these choices aren't random. Personally, as much as I want all of those additional features, I'm happy to consider buying and iPad for what it already does.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I flushed out my list form this "tell hn" (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1081451>) in a blog post.</comment>


Mark Suster & This Week in VC (interactive new layout) - <AUTHOR> http://chill.com/room/thisweekin?92811

<comment><USER2> Interesting concept. The people should be facing the screen though, not me.</comment>


Japanese Artists Show Off Their Workspaces - <AUTHOR> http://kotaku.com/japanese-artists-show-off-their-workspaces-1762345155 <comment><USER2> The variety is interesting, especially the few where there were no computer or tablet.</comment>


A new (old?) model for understanding the stages of a startup - <AUTHOR> http://thestartuptoolkit.com/blog/2012/11/a-new-model-for-understanding-the-stages-of-a-startup/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheStartupToolkit+%28The+Startup+Toolkit%29&utm_content=FaceBook <comment><USER2> So what I'm always wondering is: are there actually many (or at least some) succesful businesses that started out as a business model canvas? How about the YC companies, do they come with this in hand?

</comment><comment><USER3> Excellent explainer that i'll be passing along to aspiring founders in the future. Thank you.

<comment><AUTHOR> you're welcome :)</comment></comment>


Will Humans Still Drive in an Autonomous Future? - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedrive.com/opinion/8101/will-humans-still-drive-in-an-autonomous-future <comment><USER2> I really hope not. At least not without autonomous controls that prevent human error, such as collision avoidance.</comment>


Chrome extension to randomize your User Agent (Underpants) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tantalor/user-agent-entropy

<comment><USER2> If you give yourself the user agent of a terrible browser such as IE5, or if you give yourself the user agent of a less popular web crawler, a lot of companies won't bother to track your identity as it would be considered a waste of resources. I'm speaking as the minion of a company that deals in such things - for instance, my company won't track you for advertising purposes if you are running Linux. No profit in it!

<comment><USER3> What happens if I use Linux while browsing at home and Windows while browsing at work? How does your company handle this? I can see a couple different scenarios and am curious which is closest to practice.

1) Track data while at work. Display only at work. 2) Track data while at work. Display at home and work. 3) Track data at home and work. Display at work 4) Don't track data at all.

Of course there's a few cases I missed but from what you said I don't see the reason they'd track me at home and display at work or any other various combinations excluded.

<comment><USER4> Do you work from home using the same IP?

If I understand your question correctly, the answer would be 1. In most cases, they're doing cookie based tracking and you wouldn't have any crossover unless it was site specific retargetting and you've logged into an account on both platforms. If there's any crossover, its because you have the same browsing behaviors on both platforms.

<comment><USER3> No I don't use the same IP. I do however brows Hacker News, Facebook, Reddit, etc from both work and home.

Interesting, thank you for the information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oh, someone did beat me to it. I think too much (and slowly), it seems.

The useragent is much too random, though. As explained quite nicely on the eff page, it defeats the purpose. You've managed to uniquely identify yourself as someone with a very random-looking useragent.

I was more thinking along the lines of sending random "genuine" user-agents (combinations of various versions of Chrome/Firefox/Safari on various OS). And with some more clever way to make sure the cookies match, or fixing the user- agent is a bit useless..

</comment><comment><USER6> You are actually identifying yourself as user of that extension. This is a much smaller group than Chrome users.

</comment><comment><USER7> This counters the tracking method used by the "Underpants Project" but does little to help against something more sophisticated that made full use of the remaining bits of identifying information.

According to Panopticlick, the biggest leaks of identifying information are the list of fonts and the plugin information string, neither of which seem to be guarded against by any existing tool except NoScript, though disabling Flash might help. However, even using NoScript, your information would still probably leak to whatever popular site is in your whitelist (e.g. Google or Facebook).

Unless someone hacks Flash to always sort the font lists and finds a way to fix the plugin list leak, one way to get rid of many of these leaks is to build a locked-down virtual machine containing a fixed set of fonts, a fixed screen resolution, UTC timezone, and possibly a fixed browser together with only the en-us locale to minimise HTTP_ACCEPT information leaks (which I presume to be the most popular one). Assuming the filesystem remains mostly untouched, the font list should always be in the same order for all instances of the VM. It might not be necessary to use any specific browser, but I presume there are many possible ways to identify a browser and perhaps even its exact version from its behaviour even without using the user agent.

Even after fixing all of the leaks identified by Panopticlick, the behaviour of the user could still be used for identification, perhaps by leaks caused by the user or by bugs and inadequacies in the "anonymisation suite". To pre- emptively counter this, an orthogonal approach like the one suggested by obituary_latte could be used (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3880822>). Such a "random browser" might need to be active most of the day to minimise timezone leakage, though that might not be very practical, or even necessarily a concern for many.

Finally, a yet another thing that might help would be to use popular VPN services which would presumably reduce the amount of information leaked by your IP address.

</comment><comment><USER8> You shouldn't randomize at all if you want to remove information. Instead, set everyone to a single, common UA to make everyone look the same.

</comment><comment><USER9> I was looking into creating a bot that would randomly click and browse around on the web whilst logged in to Google to add some entropy to my "persona".

Alas, programming is hard.

I don't know what it is--perhaps my get off my lawn mentality--but I am terrified of not owning my anonymity. Though obviously not scared enough to stop using these services...

<comment><USER10> That could end up going south quickly. Scenario:

 _randomly browse to 4chan_

 _randomly click on link_

 _randomly have FBI raid your house a few weeks later_

I like the concept, but it's not something I would run personally unless there were a lot of checks in place.

<comment><USER9> Great point.

Yes, would certainly be needing of some checks. Perhaps a dictionary of acceptable link-words that would be OK to "click". Maybe also a blacklist of "never-click" words and/or domains/netblocks.

Or even perhaps a whitelist of a few domains that are OK. Chances are slim that Time.com or USAtoday or CNN links would lead to trouble and the collection of "safe" links would grow exponentially with only a handful of "safe" domains.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> And the purpose of this is for what?

<comment><USER10> I think the purpose is to show how easily some of these scare tactics can be defeated. This took what, 40 minutes to get posted? Less than an hour to thwart what is being hyped up as a big deal for anonymity.

As an aside, I think you should name it CoverAlls.

EDIT: I guess I worded that a bit harshly. Underpants is meant to be a PoC for a tactic that _may_ work in some situations, but the feeling I got is that people are taking it to be a lot more serious than it is.

<comment><USER12> 40 minutes after what?

<comment><USER5> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3878438> I guess. Though it's actually more like 7 hours than 40 minutes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How about a version for firefox?</comment>


Netflix raising prices as much as 60% - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-netflix-20110713,0,4419525.story <comment><AUTHOR> Wow, my unlimited 2 DVDs out at a time with unlimited streaming just went from $13.99 to $19.99. Beginning September 1.

<comment><USER2> At first I was annoyed, but then I checked out how much the cable company wanted and was happy again.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cable, what's that? Wish I had a bill to help put this into perspective, but I cut the cord about 10 years ago.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Transition to full-time while on H1B? - <AUTHOR> I'm a solo-founder who's been working on an idea (optimize career-building for students & professionals, wherever they are) for quite some time, while in a demanding full-time job to maintain my H1B status (mainly to stay close to my target market).<p>However, It's been challenging keeping up the pace with the limited time & mental stamina, while being short-handed (this is having already sacrificed 95% of social life). What are the best avenues for someone in my situation? Even if you get in a top accelerator, I'm wondering how that "support by connecting with immigration lawyers & similar founders" has manifested? <comment><USER2> You should confirm with immigration lawyer but you can't work for yourself on h1b Visa so you really have no (legal) options.

All you can do is work on the side and lay a foundation for your future business.

But legally speaking you have to wait until you have a green card before you can quit your job and start your own comapany in US.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! That makes sense - and it's what I've been doing thus far (prove product-market fit and everything else will solve itself), but wanted to get a better sense of how that usually works out.

Specifically, I was wondering if there were avenues available if you're able to secure funding (i.e. At the end of an accelerator), not necessarily in the form of an H1B.</comment></comment>


Using MongoDB as your primary Django database - <AUTHOR> http://staltz.com/djangoconfi-mongoengine/

<comment><USER2> I was on a project a few years ago (first PoC with Mongo 1.2, started properly in 1.4, delivered with 1.8). Have the following things improved?

\- RAM usage was a killer. For some datasets, key names took up more memory than values. \- Throwing custom JS at mongo nodes was kind of fun, and we could do interesting stuff with it that we couldn't easily do on the previous (non-sharded) datastore. But out-of-memory situations in the JS runtime was less than graceful and caused mysterious replica breakage/hangs. Eventually it was suggested that we were using MongoDB in a way that wasn't typical or intended, which was fair enough. \- We had trouble using it as a truly "schemaless" database (scientist users defining, maintaining, collaborating on their own data with object-level access controls and versioning): when you sort the result of a query (needed for paging), you either needed indexes (exploding RAM usage, finite number of indexes possible per collection) or if you could tolerate slowness (as we could) then you could use .limit() but it was hard to get the what-should-the-limit-be heuristic right, our object sizes varied wildly (sometimes exceeding BSON data size limit at times).

In another project we used MongoDB to back a read-only HTTP API representation of some 10s GiBs of reasonably stable and predictable external data, in that case it felt we were fighting it a lot less and it worked reasonably well.

I've also messed with eXist, Neo4j (which was fascinating) and a few other NoSQL things - at the end of the day I have to believe that for large sprawling heterogeneous systems (i.e. not the lone django web-app use-case) you will always want to keep authoritative data in something else and treat the NoSQL thing as a cache that can be rebuilt at any time.

Curating arbitrarily connected business objects in a graph (or having different codebases with slightly different understanding of the data mess with a given mongo collection) is infinitely harder than orderly relational tables, especially for the traditional DBA people who know how to read business process from a well-designed relational DB and likewise write such a thing by understanding those processes themselves quite well (something I didn't give them much credit for until a few jobs ago).</comment>


React and Glimmer vs. PaperclipJS (5x faster) - <AUTHOR> http://paperclip-dbmonster.herokuapp.com/

<comment><USER2> I don't think it's a bad thing that there are multiple competing front-end frameworks in JS right now.

<comment><AUTHOR> PaperclipJS is actually a template engine. You can use it with any framework such as Angular, Ember, or Backbone.

<comment><USER2> Did you write Paperclip? I already love the API.</comment></comment></comment>


Why the Apple crowd's completely wrong about Flash - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.computerworld.com/16862/android_flash <comment><USER2> Apple's wrong about Flash because they're deciding for everyone based on some pretty narrow vision - Flash on mobile devices is going to take some time, Adobe will eventually get it right and (or?) hardware will improve until it doesn't matter. How much more powerful is the latest iPhone vs. the first generation? How long until they're as powerful as a netbook or cheap laptop?

People _love_ Flash games, they play the shit out of them all day every day in a world where games made by little indie developers on $0 budgets are competing with a thousand high technology, high budget things for people's attention. Last month I tracked 3000 YEARS of play time on Flash games. That's about 100 years spent playing Flash games every day, just on the % that I track.

The biggest argument for Flash on mobile devices though is why _shouldn't_ we have it? There is nothing automagically "bad" about Flash, it's just a very rich platform that people develop a lot of amazing stuff on and a lot more ugly crap on. That describes a lot of platforms including iOS, OSX, Windows, Linux, .NET, Java, HTML/CSS/JS and countless others.

The closed nature of the flash player is obviously not going to last forever - there are already open and close source non-Adobe IDEs for Flash.

</comment><comment><USER3> He's right the Apple crowd is wrong, but Apple/Steve Jobs is mostly right.

This doesn't seem to be a commonly expressed thought so I'll spell it out plainly.

I like the fact that you can get Flash content on Android phones which works about as well as standard web content works on the iPhones (i.e. generally good enough to get the job done while away from a full computer, but with a few hiccups). It's handy and worth considering if it's something you want/need when buying a smartphone.

I also like the fact that Apple's anti-Flash stance has effectively ended the Flash Hegemony and you can't just assume it's there. If you're building interactive apps for a kids website you'll still use it, because there's nothing else comparable (yet), but if you're making an interactive graph or chart you'll at least investigate if SVG or Canvas could work just as well.

So Adobe loses out, because Flash isn't ubiquitous. Also Apple loses out, because Flash isn't available on their devices. Also Apple users lose out, because they can't access Flash content.

But overall the web wins, Apple and their users are taking one for the team and they have my thanks. If they could just stop denying reality on this (and various other issues) in their slightly scary, culty manner, I'd appreciate that too.</comment>


Ask HN: In what unconventional way did you meet your developers friends? - <AUTHOR> I don't really have friends in RL who are also developers, and I'd like to fix that.
I didn't make long lasting friendships at the university, and I don't want to join a big company just to make friend with other developers.
What do you think is the best way of fixing that? Ultimately, how did you meet your developer friends outside of university or work? <comment><USER2> github and irc

I've never met them in meat-space, but none of us see that as a problem, we spend most of our time at our machines and communicate mostly through text. Without the need to answer immediately our conversations are often deeper and slower, and we prefer this.

we communicate through whatsapp and slack, sometimes IRC but that's getting rarer

</comment><comment><USER3> Meetups. Conferences. Hackathons.

A really good way to meet a lot of developers is to organise a meetup.

<comment> rc-1140 PSA: None of these are guaranteed to work. At all.

Been taking time to go to these even though most are at terribly inconvenient times & days. Even in the city that never sleeps, I've had no dice with any of these. I've had more success with a Discord channel for .NET programmers than I have in going to real world meetups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> IRC. In the depths of restaurant work. Met another one at BJJ.

</comment><comment><USER5> small/mid companies also work great to form lasting relationships bonds...</comment>