Ask HN: creating design as a developer? - <AUTHOR>

I am a software developer that have created several websites in the past and always had the same problem; the last bit that prevents me from launching is having design and usability that people actually understand. I see many of your guys "weekend" projects getting launched with (in my eyes) excellent design. What are your best tips for getting a good design and usability of the website. What tools can help out here?<p>I have contracted designers in the past, but the result has been mediocre, and sometimes simply worse than what I had from the beginning. <comment><USER2> I know exactly what you mean, and I'm only beginning to overcome my 'bad design sense'. Since I started coding before designing, I've found it helpful to draw parallels between the two. Like studying good code helps improve your own programming skills, finding and examining what makes a design 'good' is extremely helpful. I've got a huge folder of code I use over and over again, improving it as time goes on. Likewise, I've started to keep a folder of design components -- layout ideas, button designs, gradients, as well as links to the previously mentioned 'good designs'.

Edit: This sounds like common sense now that I read it over again. Sorry if it's not helpful.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure whether to call myself a designer or a programmer (or both or neither), but I have released a handful of web apps/sites that usually end up receiving compliments for good design [1]. The funny thing is that I've never read a book or even so much as a blog post on what makes a design good.

Here's the most helpful tip you'll ever receive: find something beautiful and copy it exactly, pixel for pixel. You can start as small as you feel comfortable - a button, an icon, even a nice shadow. From there, work your way up. At this point, don't worry about being original. Duplicating existing design will help you in so many ways. You'll become acquainted with the design software of choice. You'll learn about tools and menus that you never new existed. You'll discover neat techniques, and you'll notice details that you overlooked before. As you work, you'll start to understand why things fit together the way they do. You'll see that some elements work together and some don't. Pick out pieces from different designs and mash them together.

And here's a secret: nobody gets a design right on the first try. Experiment, experiment, experiment! If something looks a bit off, adjust it. You probably won't know exactly how to adjust it, so tweak the element in every way you can think of. Resize, change the color, adjust the stroke or gradient. Eventually it will look right.

[1] <http://letspocket.com>, <http://madebyloren.com>, <http://snowday2011.com>, <http://boxify.me> are a few of the designs I've worked on recently

</comment><comment><USER4> You're already on the right path, merely by caring you give your project the chance to have good design, it rarely (never?) happens by accident.

A common problem developers can fall into is failing to allocate enough time for design. You describe it as "the last bit", when in terms of effort required it may reasonably be every bit as large a task as any other component of your project, and in terms of user impact it may be the largest part of your project.

A (not so relevant) example about understanding the cost of design work: a lot of people claim that they can't draw, but they may be saying "my first sketch looked awful, therefore I can't draw", I started programming with 10 PRINT "HI!" 20 GOTO 10 but didn't tell myself "I can't write a defender clone, therefore I'll never be a programmer", skills are developed through use and practice.

From a developer perspective ask yourself what role design plays in the architecture of your project, are you structuring things so that the design can be rev'd independently of the software - I often bounce between working on design side and programming side tasks while working (ADD at work), but that is only really practical if they are (de)coupled in a way that allows parallel development.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have the same issue myself. I feel that I generally have good taste but I am so inexperienced with design, that I would never come up with good looking design from scratch. That being said, I found out about this useful Mac program called Little Snapper. It helps you build a scrapbook of screen captures. I use it to capture webpages and design elements that I like the look of. I'm not saying to steal other people's design, but I find it to be a very inspirational source to browse through once you've built up a bit of a database.

Here's the link if anyone is interested. <http://www.realmacsoftware.com/littlesnapper/>

</comment><comment><USER6> Like learning how to program, I think it's a mistake to look at a finished product, go "I want my project to look like that!" and then try to deconstruct the end result systematically.

I'd suggest forgetting the "oh pretty!" aspect of design, and just focus on simplicity, both on aesthetics (What's simpler than a line to separate? White space!) and usability (Simpler than two clicks: one click). The basic principles of fonts, spacing, and color theory always apply, so start with getting comfortable with these techniques. The gradients, subtle shading, and translucency effects can come later and build on top of the basics anyway.

</comment><comment><USER7> There are two ways you can go:

1\. Don't worry about design and think about every project you do as a prototype. If you get it off the ground are think your project has potential then bring in some design talent and do the project for real.

2\. Before you roll up your sleeves and start to write code try to first spec the project with the help of a designer who understands usability. Even if these are sketches on a napkin you'll do better work.

Also there is a difference between art direction and usability -- if you just want to improve the look and feel you can bring in a designer after you're done.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is something I struggle with all the time when working on a project. For me I have found that the design process is just as iterative as the development process, it doesn't just happen right away; unless you want to grab a template and tweak it a little bit. Check out sites like Pattern Tap for UI and ColourLovers for color schemes. Also, practice. Play around with the UI, experiment with colors and layouts.

</comment><comment><USER9> Hey a designer here. I was thinking of putting together some basic steps which a developer can follow to get a decent design. I am not sure how to present it. There is so much to tell "How to" and "Why" and then other things come-up.

Would you be interested in something like that? How would you like it to be presented?

<comment><USER10> Why don't you write a series of blogposts? That's be successful. Then, with the feedback on those, turn it into a book/site/... Keep it simple, here's what I'd like to see:

Series on doing visual design for developers.

1\. keep it simple - no design is better than bad design, some design basics

2\. fonts

3\. Heavyness of text

4\. Picking a color scheme

5\. Buttons

6\. Doing a simple but clean logo

7\. Icons and small visual elements

each step really practical with lots of examples etc.

<comment><USER9> Cool! I've been planning it for long. Also would you like more of How-to or theory basics so you can go and do it yourself? Coz either I can tell you the thinking behind or the Photoshop / alt. how-to.s (later suck).

Pretty much like - teach you to catch a fish or catch one for you.

<comment><USER10> Light on theory, heavy on examples please. Coders always want to see code. So show them the "hello world" of button making.

I know you want to write about theory, everyone does, but leave that for the end and keep it light.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd also recommend themeforest.com or something similar but in case you want to handle it yourself this article helped me out a lot: [http://flyosity.com/tutorial/crafting-subtle-realistic- user-...](http://flyosity.com/tutorial/crafting-subtle-realistic-user- interfaces.php)

</comment><comment><USER12> Cheat. <http://themeforest.com/> and the like ftw. :)

</comment><comment><USER13> Check out <http://colourlovers.com> and Adobe Kuler. Both recommend colour schemes you can use.

</comment><comment><USER14> Drop me a line ;)

</comment><comment><USER15> Maybe it's not so much about tools as about teaching yourself design. No, really. It's not that hard, and it doesn't require you to "be artistic" -- a common misperception. Look for books by Robin Williams (a woman, not the actor) as a start. Visual design is more about science than about art.</comment>


Cyberattacks Put Russian Fingers on the Switch at Power Plants - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/15/us/politics/russia-cyberattacks.html <comment><USER2> Posted an hour earlier; 36+ comments:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16597030](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16597030)</comment>


Logfreely – Logging That Doesn't Cost an Arm and a Leg - <AUTHOR> https://logfreely.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN!

I'm one of the makers of Logfreely. We realized that most of the tools out there for managed logging we're hard to set up and had a pricing policy that quickly grew prohibitively expensive. We wanted to make a change to that and offer a solution somewhere in between self-hosting and a fully managed solution.

We manage everything: from provisions, to scaling, to version updates, but the servers and the data is ultimately on your cloud provider account. We believe this model better aligns incentives. We're compelled to find ways to cut costs for you, while at the same time you get to enjoy having full ownership of your logging stack.

We would love to hear your feedback and your experiences with logging. I'm personally excited to be sharing this with HN, and I'll be here to answer any and all questions you want to throw my way!

</comment><comment><USER2> Seems interesting - I've wanted to set up my own ELK stack before, but it just didn't seem worth the effort, so I ended up trying to go through the pricing pages of multiple cloud logging providers to figure out which would be the cheapest. It was confusing, and just took up so much time, so I hope this is way better.</comment>


iLoo - vezzy-fnord https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILoo <comment><AUTHOR>
        The i-Loo featured an internet-enabled monitor on the cubicle wall and a special
        printer that would allow users to print information
        on a standard toilet paper roll.

I would have loved to see that product pitch.

<comment><USER2> Take a photo of your boss, and get great satisfaction in going to the toilet.

<comment><USER3> Potential for nation wide mental health improvements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Near where I grew up, a petrol station toilet functioned as a de facto public toilet for passersby. The owner must have been a lilt eccentric.

Anyway, when you turned on the light a little disco ball would light up and some high energy pop song would play: "I Want to Break Free," "YMCA".. something like that.

It was the talk of the town.

iLoo seems like a bad idea, but for an unconventional marketing campaign, doing something with festival toilets is not a bad idea. If you've seen Better Call Saul's talking toilet, that would be a particularly impactful approach.

</comment><comment><USER5> Combining keyboards and festival toilets, the two dirtiest things known to mankind, only seems logical. This could have spawned new lifeforms.

<comment><USER6> I read shopping cart handles were filthier than toilet seats or keyboards. A study in 2011 discovered that fecal bacteria was on 72% of all shopping carts: [http://blogs.webmd.com/breaking-news/2011/03/fecal- bacteria-...](http://blogs.webmd.com/breaking-news/2011/03/fecal-bacteria- on-72-of-shopping-carts.html)

<comment><USER7> I recon the percentage for toothbrushes is higher, because proximity. Nothing wrong with giving your immune system a bit of a workout.

<comment><USER8> that is why its great to toss them into the dish washer to keep them clean.

<comment><USER9> The ex-boss of a friend of mine used to clean the toilet brush in the office dish washer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> At the CCC Camp there is something called the Datenklo (Data toilet) where they use festival toilets as weatherproofing for network equipment.

<comment><USER11> We had them at EMF Camp too.

There's something quite obscene about camping but with a 230v mains feed and >100mbit internet to your tent :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think it is just Microsoft's way of making fun of Apple's product naming convention.

<comment><USER13> Someone always has to spoil the party by blurting out the truth :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Way ahead of its time. Nowadays everyone uses the internet while on the toilet.

</comment><comment><USER15> Yet another great innovation crushed by unimaginative soulless beauracrats.

</comment><comment><USER16> The flush servo is connected to a Windows ME box via serial. Fuck.

</comment><comment><USER17> Tangentially related, but I remember reading a "Top Tip" in Viz (which is an adult comic - think Onion but more English and stupid [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viz_(comics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viz_\(comics\))) which was along the lines of:

When at your friends house, subtly announce to them that you need a poo by asking for their wifi password.

</comment><comment><USER18> Im sorry but you need to register a toilett paper license first at microsoft.com. Do not support unclean behinds! Report people doing the crapwalk!

<comment><USER19> That is after reading the EULA printed on the said toilet paper.

<comment><USER20> That's assuming the EULA will fit on said toilet paper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _... cancelled because it would do little to promote the MSN brand._

It would have promoted the brand to be sure, just not in the direction they wanted.

I wonder if they were inspired by Apple to use an iName. But then, "internet" was the best excuse ever for the ridiculous leading vocal.

<comment> Tuna-Fish Apple didn't invent the iName, they were late on that bandwagon. For some unfathomable reason i or e whatevers were for a while _the_ way to name your product if you had no better ideas. In fact, Apple have had to buy or otherwise acquire most of the iNames they use from previous users. (Including at least iPhone, iOS, iPad.) However, all the other consumer iWhatevers were generally completely uninspired products that didn't live long and which no- one remembers, while people do remember the Apple iProducts, so iNames are now associated with Apple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Forget Dr. Who's 'Tardis' \- Call this the 'Turdis'

</comment><comment><USER23> The lines for the bathroom at our office are so bad, I actually want to block the wifi in there so people will hurry up and get off the can...

</comment><comment><USER24> Was the latest in a long line of shit products.

</comment><comment><USER25> That's pretty damn innovative for Microsoft. It's a shame they didn't have the balls to stick to it. That could've been the first step to electronics in all sorts of places, maybe even would've led to Microsoft spearheading IoT.

<comment><USER26> Novel, yes, but I wouldn't call it innovative. It seems overkill and I can't think of many practical uses. Hotmail station is icky (dirty kryvoard). Keyboardless applications.. Hmm, video chat with other iLoo users??

If you want to commercialise the public toilet in 2003, just add a stack of mildly interesting sponsored magazines, and build an internet station with Hotmail like a public telephone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> How have I never heard of this before?! In a way I think it was brave of Microsoft to try something like this, something so out of the box for the company.

</comment><comment><USER28> It needs a Kinect.

<comment><USER29> The more advanced edition will come with Oculus Rift VR.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> and here I am thinking it was the next version of HP's iLO - [http://www8.hp.com/us/en/products/servers/ilo/integrated- lig...](http://www8.hp.com/us/en/products/servers/ilo/integrated-lights- out.html)

</comment><comment><USER31> I wonder if anyone who has worked on the project dared listing it on their résumé. I would :)

<comment><USER29> Only if it's printed on toilet paper :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The iLoo would take the meaning of zero-day exploits to a whole new level...

BTW patch your iLoo regularly! Reinstalling _really_ is an unpleasant job :)

</comment><comment><USER32> Reminds me of the time Nintendo came up with the world's stupidest name for a console, the Wii.

The jokes that came out then too.

<comment><USER33> The name "iPad" was made fun of a lot too when it was first announced (being compared to tampons and stuff).

That aside, I think iLoo is a genuinely stupid idea and no amount of rebranding could've saved it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> iLoo - there goes my iPoo</comment>


Are 64% of Features Really Rarely or Never Used? - <AUTHOR> https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/are-64-of-features-really-rarely-or-never-used

<comment><USER2> Multiple optional features considered harmful. They complicate testing, clutter the user experience, and do not generally bring much to the party. If a feature is useful, it should be there (and not be optional).

Moreover, I am not a big fan of themes, backgrounds, colors, and elements of fancy GUIs. They often seem more like noise that has to be tolerated than an assist in getting the job done. The waste computer cycles without providing anything in return, to say nothing about the fact that programming them is a major time sink. A text command line interface is often better than some sequence of buttons, clicks, and moves. Moreover, a GUI often comes with a predisposition to doing things by hand rather than doing them by programming (scripting).</comment>


Please update your emergency contact information. - <AUTHOR>

This morning while out running I came across a woman who had collapsed on the sidewalk.  Another runner and I performed cpr until paramedics arrived.  We were able to contact her husband through her iPhone.  I don't know if this story has a happy ending yet but I realized I didn't have an emergency contact setup on my phone.  I probably could have dug through her contacts but because she had her first contact as "Emergency Contact" it made things just a little easier.<p>Also, you might want to take a few minutes and read up on the latest cpr techniques.  I had a few training courses about 20 years ago but the paramedics pointed out some things I could have done better - faster chest compressions than what I was taught, for example. <comment><USER2> This advice won't be very helpful if your phone requires a PIN to unlock. Consider changing your wallpaper to contain emergency information (i.e. [http://atmac.org/put-emergency-information-on-your-iphone- wa...](http://atmac.org/put-emergency-information-on-your-iphone-wallpaper) for iPhone) in this case.

<comment><USER3> Seriously, putting ICE info so it's always visible on your phone must be the most _depressing_ thing you could ever do. I understand that some people have medical conditions that puts them at risk every day, but the absolute majority of normal, healthy people do not need this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> On the last point, I hadn't noticed until I looked it up just now that a bunch of organizations are now advocating a compressions-only approach to CPR ("CCR"), as opposed to the alternating compressions-and-ventilation approach I was taught a long time ago, especially for non-professionals administering CPR. One article: [http://emsresponder.com/print/Emergency--Medical- Services/CA...](http://emsresponder.com/print/Emergency--Medical- Services/CARDIOCEREBRAL-Resuscitation/1$7857)

</comment><comment><USER5> As a former police officer, I highly advocate having an ICE contact in your phone. It really can make a huge difference.

That said, it doesn't do a lick of good to have an ICE contact set up if, when the first responder picks up your phone, it asks for a password to get into it. It's one of those cases where you need to weigh the balance on convenience vs security.

<comment><USER6> Sounds like an golden opportunity for a software tweak.

Have the ability to configure this stuff on the lock screen.

Either text (this phone owned by bleh) or a maybe a button to dial an emergency number.

<comment><USER7> I can think of an iPhone immediately (cringe) and how you can make an emergency call when the phone is locked.

Have it just display something like "Emergency contact" who you can dial without displaying any more information on the person, not even the phone number when it dials.

Having this person know personal information about you (blood type, etc) would then still be relatively secure versus openly available, and the person would have little risk of getting prank called if your phone is stolen outside of an emergency situation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In naming your emergency contact entry (or entries), use the prefix ICE (In Case of Emergency); first responders supposedly look for that.

EXAMPLE: "ICE - Spouse - Jane Doe"

(See [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2005/07...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2005/07/17/AR2005071700879.html))

EDIT: I've put some basic emergency info about myself into my ICE entry -- my name, blood type, etc.

<comment><USER9> Phones break, especially when you crash into them with cars (which might be how you get hurt, too.) Medical bracelets and dog tags are somewhat more durable.

<http://www.dogtagsonline.com/>

<http://www.americanmedical-id.com/>

<comment><USER8> Dogtags and bracelets aren't a bad idea at all, but a lot of people won't wear them.

A cell-phone ICE entry can be a big help in situations not involving a violent impact, such as heart attacks, strokes, seizures, etc.

Granting that there's no perfect solution, any inexpensive emergency-prep measure you can take is better than nothing.

<comment><USER10> _Dogtags and bracelets aren't a bad idea at all, but a lot of people won't wear them._

In fact, for some professions (woodworking, electrical work, factory work, etc), dogtags and bracelets are prohibited.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You could do something like my father, who's an avid cyclist, does and put your emergency contact information, DOB, blood type and all that on your helmet. I'd think this would go doubly for anyone on a motorcycle as you'll end in an accident eventually.

<comment><USER12> As a motorcycle rider, I'm intrigued by the (mistyped, I'm sure) phrase, "You'll end in an accident eventually" (which, as typed, has significant truth). Wouldn't really need much info at that point, eh?

<comment><USER11> Oh, it's a deliberate thing. I don't know many long-time motorcycle riders that haven't broken something at some point from a crash.

<comment><USER13> I think he was referring to your choice of "end in" instead of "end up in".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My wife and I are cyclists. There are many times when I'm out on the road by myself, and my cell phone is either in my jersey pocket or in the bag under my seat. If in the jersey, in a crash, it can fly out. If in the seat bag, paramedics may not look for it. Even if they did, it gets locked after "x" amount of time (company security policy). I do however wear a RoadID. They have a product that you wear (several different styles), and an "interactive" version. This version will give paramedics a number to call to get your information...and you can list everything - name, emergency contact, insurance, drug allergies, all of it. Since they must have your pin (which is on the piece you are wearing), it is fairly secure, but not 100% secure (I think we can all agree nothing is 100% secure).

<http://www.roadid.com/Common/Products.aspx>

</comment><comment><USER15> As dctoedt mentioned, creating an ICE entry is a great first step. But it is unfortunate how few people actually take the time, and it's not a complete solution.

If anyone is willing, I would love to get even more survey results regarding my soon-to-launch emergency contact service (Still working on the UI/UX and very close to the MVP). Wrt creating an ICE entry, I'm seeing less than 30% in the survey have done so.

The survey link is <http://bit.ly/MyECInfoSurvey>

Please feel free to pass the link along to friends and family.

Cheers, Shawn

Ps, since this is HN after all, MyEC Info is a bootstrapped, single-founder startup. If this is a topic you are passionate about please feel free to contact me.

<comment><USER16> Small point: I stopped taking the survey after a couple of questions, because I'm not in your demographic. Most of the questions involved my child/partner's emergency info, and I'm single and childless, so I ended up with No on most questions.

Perhaps you know this and are factoring it in, but at any rate, that's why I didn't finish the survey. It might be good to have some qualifying questions at the top, or even a note about the demographic you'd like to respond.

<comment><USER15> Hey George, Thanks for comment and for taking the time. This issue with the structure of the questions has come up and I've been working on a new survey with some qualifiers up front to direct the flow. Simply wasn't ready when the original topic was posted and I decided to be a little opportunistic.

Although those with children are my target demographic, issues of emergency preparedness affect everyone. Hopefully I'll be able to solve some of those issues across all demographics.

That said, please finish the survey if you have the time. There is a question at the end about number of children that does allow me to factor things in a bit.

Thanks again, Shawn

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm not sure about everyone else's state, but here we now have an emergency contact list as part of your driver's license record, so it's easy to look up even if all they have is a name.

I keep a couple small laser-printed, laminated contact info cards in or on my running / cycling gear.

<comment><USER15> Hey Ja27, I'm only aware of two public service initiatives to link emergency contact information to DMV records, Ohio and Illinois.

If you don't mind my asking, what state do you live in?

Cheers, Shawn (My email address is in my profile if you prefer not to post here...)

<comment><USER17> Colorado and Florida do it too now. I'm surprised more states don't.

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

<comment><USER15> Awesome, thanks for the link. Hopefully it will only be a matter of time before more states setup their own programs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Many years ago when I attended First Aid/CPR training from the American Red Cross, I was told that you can actually get in serious trouble for performing CPR without a valid license. They explained that it's quite common to break ribs while performing chest compressions and these broken ribs can puncture a lung. If the individual you're helping only had a very weak pulse that you missed, you might have just made things a lot worse, perhaps even killing them.

I was told having an active AMR license legally protects you from any such accidents - especially since you are obliged to assist - but if you're untrained and unlicensed you could be held responsible (manslaughter?). Is this still the case?

<comment><USER19> See this for a start: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law>

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> What's the point of mentioning the make of her phone? Would you have been less able to contact her husband using a Samsung?

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't really mean anything by it. I do mobile app development and referenced is like a car mechanic might mention the make of a car involved in an accident. In any case, whatever your phone please take a minute and make sure your info is up to date.</comment></comment>


Ultimate Oldschool PC Font Pack - <AUTHOR> https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/readme/ <comment><USER2> Even just reading that home screen brings back strange sense memories. For anyone curious the main font used for this website is the "IBMVGA8" one.

As a writer, I still think drafting things from scratch was best done on a 90's era black background PC running WordPerfect.

I guess theoretically it's still possible to do that -- I wonder if anyone makes turnkey systems for that the way some people still specialize in old typewriters.

<comment><USER3> > I guess theoretically it's still possible to do that -- I wonder if anyone > makes turnkey systems for that the way some people still specialize in old > typewriters.

I still run WordPerfect. No other writing software has come close to making that same experience.

Til Win8.1, I was able to get it running natively with a little bit of effort, but it became too much of a hassle at that point.

Now, I run Win3.1 inside DOSBox, with WordPerfect installed. It's more stable than the my old IBM PC was, so I'm fairly happy, though crashes do still occur. The keymap differences do take some getting used to when swapping between everyday things and WP though: F1->Escape, F3->F1, etc.

Getting files from WP to the rest of the world isn't entirely straight forward, and I've found a lot of the WP->DOCX converters fail with typesetting and other issues, so I just print to PDF now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very interesting approach! I often hear people complain about how all programs in the old days were more efficient, but I never met anybody who actually lived up to the logical conclusion. [1]

 _> I run Win3.1 inside DOSBox_

Out of curiosity: What is the avantage of DOSBox compared to QEMU for your use case?

 _> The keymap differences do take some getting used to when swapping between everyday things and WP though: F1->Escape, F3->F1, etc._

Can't you just define different mappings in your virtualization tool? (DOSBox)

[1] Except for large institutes like banks, air traffic control, etc. working with huge legacy systems, which is perhaps the other extreme.

<comment><USER3> I've actually done a lot of work with legacy systems, maybe I'm a bit sentimental.

> Out of curiosity: What is the avantage of DOSBox compared to QEMU for your > use case?

None, for the most part. DOSBox is a little better documented around things that might break.

I chose DOSBox a few years back, because I still had my Windows 3.1 disks, but I didn't have any DOS disks anymore. Which gave me the option of Virtual Machine + FreeDOS, or Dosbox. And FreeDOS was very unstable at the time.

I know lots of publishers for DOS-era software are gone, and so people do tend to choose to pirate if they want to get hold of that sort of thing, but I have and continue to contract to the government for very sensitive areas, so I always have to walk a legal tightrope. So, I can only use my old software.

Thankfully, I've never thrown out my floppy disks. I imaged them all in about '02, being in a country that allows you to transfer your owned data into half a dozen different mediums as you see fit.

I have actually been having some mounting issues with Dosbox recently, so I might think about tearing it down and building a VM with FreeDOS instead sometime soon. (Though thanks to DOS' super simple structure, that doesn't mean reinstalling everything from scratch).

\---

> Can't you just define different mappings in your virtualization tool? > (DOSBox)

You could. But it's just WordPerfect. They decided to ignore the standard, and go with a keymapping that made a little more sense, because of keyboard designs back then. However, I've got a couple dozen programs I use, and I'd rather not have WordPerfect with it's own keymapping and a restart to switch between it and the default. It isn't particularly onerous, just requires a bit of mental task switching.

I've written two novels in WP, so the keymappings are ingrained, I just have to get into the "flow" of things before my mind stops hitting the wrong key.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> BTW, does anyone here have a Sperry Luggable and is willing to dump the screen font to a file (or take enough high-res pictures that it can be recreated)?

Sample: [https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/MGIAAOSwFqJWk6Wq/s-l1600.jpg](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/MGIAAOSwFqJWk6Wq/s-l1600.jpg)

If someone wants to grab it: [https://www.ebay.com/itm/vintage-sperry- luggable-computer-20...](https://www.ebay.com/itm/vintage-sperry-luggable- computer-20-meg-hd-boots-works-ships- worldwide/152778302528?hash=item23924be440)

<comment><USER5> If that interests you, then you may like this video I stumbled across this weekend.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QikO0WOAGWI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QikO0WOAGWI)

<comment><USER4> I thought only Apple II's were able to move stuff by half a pixel to the side... :-(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Heh. Back in the 90s when I was making my first attempts at videogames, I remember "reverse engineering" the two fonts used in Monkey Island using graph paper and a magnifying glass :) Good times.

<comment><USER7> Yes, and I ripped a walking Lemming animation like that.

Talk about time to burn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The reason these fonts didn't get much love is because growing up on ATARI ST's, Commodore 64's, Amigas and ZX Spectrums, the PC tin-bucket and his ugly fonts were synonymous with an overpriced, slow, loud, power hungry computer with extremely bad, inelegant hardware with vastly inferior capabilities. The PC bucket is and remains the butt of jokes to anyone who grew up on the non—IBM computers from the era or used real UNIX hardware.

When will we see those beatiful _Sun_ OpenBoot PROM and sgi workstation firmware fonts remade as TTF's? Much nicer to look at those.

<comment><USER9> OpenBSD VT fonts are almost the same.

Check Luxi Mono for TTF fonts.

Also: [https://us- east.manta.joyent.com/jmc/public/tmp/gallant12x22...](https://us- east.manta.joyent.com/jmc/public/tmp/gallant12x22.ttf)

<comment><USER4> I recently noted Solaris 11 boots the console to the same they used with the SPARCStations.

<comment><USER8> It's been that way since around 2012, not that it helped them after Snoracle's abundant blunders.

It'd be really cool if they brought the Black-on-Gray console OBP font back to illumos though. That would be a treat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Been using this (VGA16) on both linux and Mac in all editors, terminals, IDEs for about a year. It's by far the best typeface for me, and I've tried many.

<comment><USER11> Can you detail your Mac setup a bit? I've tried out these fonts, but end up struggling to get the right size, and disabling antialiasing makes things look pretty ugly.

<comment><USER10> Sure! I miswrote VGA16, it's actually VGA8. I'm on a retina display, and set the size to 16pt. I do have anti-alias disabled in e.g. iTerm2, but visually it makes no difference.

In iTerm2 I disable "Draw bold text in bold font". For vim I use MacVim sometimes, which hash gfn=PxPlus IBM VGA8:h16.

Screenshot: [https://imgur.com/a/TBuS4](https://imgur.com/a/TBuS4)

<comment><USER11> Ah, that's the kicker. Looks great on my MBP's built-in retina display, but crap on my older external monitors. So far the only font I've been able to use on those without anti-aliasing is Monaco.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Holy cow, the look of that IBMVGA8 font hit me right in the gut: instantly I'm ten years old and puzzling my way through the great underground empire.

Somehow I expected my petite madeleine moment would be more... literary

</comment><comment><USER13> These are so fantastic! Out of interest, does anyone know how copyright for these fonts work? I see a disclaimer, but what would be required to use one of the fonts in a commercial application?

<comment><USER14> In the US, Bitmap fonts aren't copyrightable, IIRC. Only vector fonts are, because vector fonts are considered software, while bitmap fonts are not.

The vector font files themselves ARE copyrightable, however the shapes that these software programs (that's what the court considers vector font files) draw to your screen or printed media are not copyrightable.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I am really happy with Fixedsys Excelsior[0].

[0]: [http://www.fixedsysexcelsior.com/](http://www.fixedsysexcelsior.com/)

<comment><USER16> And for these who need programming ligatures (like <=, >=, >>=, etc) I made my own version of it [https://github.com/kika/fixedsys](https://github.com/kika/fixedsys)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The IBM fonts are clearly the best. Hardly surprising.

<comment><USER4> And their PC fonts were their ugliest.

No other font of theirs compares to their flagship mainframe terminal product [https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font](https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font)

(the original, pixel-by-pixel, is the one used in x3270, from which this was based)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Linux still starts booting using such font, until it changes to slightly different one (make sure to set loglevel=4 or something of the sort, and remove quiet parameter to actually see text during boot).

<comment><USER19> I think what is going on these days is that the font change coincide with the GPU driver kicking in, as much of what was done with GPUs are now done in the kernel, rather than X, via the DRI sub-system.

<comment><USER18> So kernel GPU driver uses some special bitmap font to render in framebuffer? And how is it working before the GPU driver kicks in and where is that older font coming from?

<comment><USER20> Modern kernel GPU driver knows enough about the GPU to switch video modes (and usually also enough to detect connected monitors) and setup some kind of linear framebuffer mode. The first font used for FB-emulated console is statically linked into relevant module and usually gets replaced with more complete font by initramfs code.

IIRC on my desktop the switch to graphical mode happens about 300ms after loading the kernel. Funnily enough grub2 before that also runs in 4k graphics mode, which given the 8x16px font is somewhat absurd (and the screen redraw is slow enough that you can see that it for some reason happens from bottom to top)

Edit: this is with amdgpu, but both intel, nouveau and ATI rage XL on server motherboards (which is somehow suboptimal :)) behave similarly on debian. Maybe with nvidia driver you still get native text mode on consoles (for a long time nvidia driver was known to interfere with operation of linux framebuffer infrastructure, but I don't known how this works today).

<comment><USER18> _> IIRC on my desktop the switch to graphical mode happens about 300ms after loading the kernel. Funnily enough grub2 before that also runs in 4k graphics mode, which given the 8x16px font is somewhat absurd (and the screen redraw is slow enough that you can see that it for some reason happens from bottom to top)_

Yeah, I noticed that. GRUB font looks similar to the one that's rendered after the kernel GPU driver takes over.

I also noticed during boot (when systemd messages are showing up) a transition with amdgpu (RX 480, Polaris) where it displays a color mess for a split moment, and redraws the screen in new font after that. Never saw that with Intel.

I haven't used Nvidia in a while, but their blob doesn't support proper framebuffer if I remember correctly, so it causes an ugly resolution during boot.

<comment><USER20> On Bonaire (no idea what the card is as I bought it on the basis of being supported by amdgpu and having right combination of outputs and nothing else) I don't get mess for split second, but after the switch to graphical mode first two lines are partialy replaced by randomly colored special characters.

<comment><USER18> That mess started appearing at some point with kernel 4.14.x.

It's also isolated to upper area and doesn't take the whole screen, but it's more than two lines.

<comment><USER21> I've seen this as well and noticed that it was only after moving to 4.14.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > ...these support extended Latin, Greek, Cyrillic and Hebrew

I'd love to read about who and why chose this wonderfully useless list of languages.

<comment><USER23> You're mistaking character sets for languages.

<comment><USER22> I guess I didn't phrase it very clearly - why for example Greek is there rather than Arabic or Japanese? For the math symbols?

<comment><USER24> Good luck representing Japanese (kanji especially) in 8x16 pixel dimensions.

Edit: Apparently I'm wrong - 8x8 is acceptable as long as context is given [https://chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/16669/lowest- pix...](https://chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/16669/lowest-pixel- resolution-needed-to-support-chinese)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Incredible Obstacle-Dodging Full Autonomy with New R1 Consumer Drone - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/drones/skydio-r1-drone <comment> fly-dji The Phantom X can already do this

[https://youtu.be/ec1EF2UaQ4U](https://youtu.be/ec1EF2UaQ4U)

<comment><USER2> Skydio had some pretty cool demos back in 2015 as well:

[https://youtu.be/kM3BPixFVq0](https://youtu.be/kM3BPixFVq0)

Now they have a product. You can't buy the Phantom X.</comment></comment>


Introducing Versioning Poems - <AUTHOR> http://nicola.io/versioning-poems/2015/

<comment><USER2> Brilliant! This way, if you are blaming, you can cry at both the poetry and the offending code.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice use of the Tufte design ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment>


Start using your new project early - <AUTHOR> https://yakking.branchable.com/posts/use-early/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is an interesting variation of the "release early, release often" theme: Use early, use regularly.</comment>


Three Types of Harmful Hackathons - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rokkincat.com/three-types-of-harmful-hackathons/ <comment><USER3> I've done Startup Weekend once before and it felt like how the "The Business- A-Thon" was described. My friends and I did not know this would be the case going in and spent all of our time pumping out an MVP (which worked!) while the teams that won largely didn't have ANY code to show for their time. It was all slides and marketing talk. The winner DID have code but it was a <1hr rails app thrown together with no styling just a form to submit data to the backend and I don't even think they got it to process CC's (it was crowd fundraising thing). Ours was well thought out, looked nice, and WORKED yet we were beat out by people who could put together a more appealing keynote presentation.

It was a pretty big letdown and I haven't been back to SW or any hackathons since. I love banging out an MVP in a weekend with friends but not if we are going to be judged on our presentation and not our work. I know, I know that's how the real world works as well but I just expected better from the experience. I also understand that maybe SW is not aimed at being a hackathon but I just wish they could have given more weight to something that worked and was accessible today (also we spend the whole weekend minus about 8hrs total for sleep between 2 nights) vs a lot of marketing/sales talk (who left the venue early and showed up late).

Quick edit: Just wanted to say that I see this more as my failing to understand what SW was instead of me blaming SW for not meeting my incorrect expectations. SW is fine but it's just probably not for me.

<comment><USER4> So team up with a business / marketing person next time. They can build slides and do market research while you write code. I've judged a few hackathons before, and I've seen teams like yours lose because your MVP doesn't actually serve a market need. The market need doesn't even need to be profitable; but you need to define and communicate the problem your product solves. Many talented engineers can't do that.

This is how the real world works: the business side of things is often more important than the technical implementation. If you fuck up the business side of things and end up making the wrong product, it doesn't matter how clean or well-implemented it is. But if you have the right product-market fit and a good business process around improving it, you can become incredibly successful even if your product is written in PHP (Facebook anyone?)

<comment><USER5> I feel like this is missing the point, as I think the point being made by joshstrange also agrees with.

I don't want to go to hackathons to mimic the real world or simulate business savvy. I want to go there to spend 48hours building something that is technologically fun with likeminded people.

If "appropriate to become a business" is a criterion then it's not a hackathon it's a businessathon.

Put it this way: can I spend 48hrs building a mini hydroponic lab powered by a raspberry pi and arduino? Or should I spend that time making [https://www.barkbox.com/](https://www.barkbox.com/) ?

<comment><USER4> > can I spend 48hrs building a mini hydroponic lab powered by a raspberry pi > and arduino?

I don't see why not. Here's your pitch: recreational marijuana has been legalized in 5 states, but commercial sale is only legal in two, while cultivation for personal use is legal in all five. Additionally, if black market sales are included, marijuana is the biggest cash crop in the US with $35 billion annually. So there is BIG money in the market. A rpi/arduino hydroponic system is the first prototype of a product you can sell to consumers so they can grow their own in areas where they can't buy it. It's like Nest, but for growing pot.

Now have some business nerd spend an hour making a few slides and you're done. You have articulated the problem, the size of the market and the product you're creating. You don't actually have to make the product beyond the prototype stage, you just have to pitch it like you could.

<comment><USER6> @exelius, i think what @joshstrange wants to say is that a hackathon is a place where people want to build things whether it make sense or no sense at all.

Adding the business stuff is not appealing to hackers. It definitely is good to earn money out of it, but the fun goes away.

@joshstrange, a lot of developers felt the same way as you do. Startup Weekend should have emphasized that it is not a hackathon, but a business learning event. Or if you are dev, and you want to build your own startup, it's a good event to exercise a startup like environment. I have nothing against Startup Weekend. I believe it is helping a lot of people to become entrepreneurs but some of the organizers who are not well-trained might have misinformed the participants the real intention of the event resulting to this confusion.

@exelius, you've mentioned this part: "Now have some business nerd spend an hour making a few slides and you're done. You have articulated the problem, the size of the market and the product you're creating. You don't actually have to make the product beyond the prototype stage, you just have to pitch it like you could."

\--->>> That does not define a hackathon. That is a business pitching competition... Remember in a hackathon, you were able to build things, build something. There is a product after the event which you are proud to show & tell whether the audience like it or not... Based on your statement, what you're implying is that a hackathon can be just a pitch deck with an awesome pitch from the presenter, which is totally not what a hackathon is about.

<comment><USER4> No; I agree a hackathon isn't just a business pitch. You should also have to build a prototype that does most of what you claim it to. But most hackathons also make you justify that product's existence.

If you want to build something cool, you don't need a hackathon for that. Just build it. But if you enter a competition where people are judging your creation, then you have to be able to pitch it based on the judgment criteria.

<comment><USER6> A hackathon is a place where you can build your own thing, a place where you learn new things from others. For info, a hackathon doesn't necessarily mean a competition. It's an event where people come together and build things. People just added the competition factor.

@exelius, you see things only in the perspective of an entrepreneur or business dev. But what you are reading right now are the frustrations of the developers -- the pain points that most developers/engineers feel on how they are being violated with what's happening in these kind of events.

So in a hackathon, for you what should be the judging criteria? 90% can be a viable product based on a presention & 10% execution? Is that what you are saying? If yes, then it should be an idea-thon (not a hackathon), where people present their ideas and whoever has the best idea (which you, as a judge, think is the most viable product based on potential market size and potential usability) wins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am a software engineer in the Bay Area. Of my friends, few are engineers whom I can geek-out or talk shop with. Hackathons seemed like a potentially good way to do it, but this article highlights the reasons I haven't been attending them: I just want to meet some people, hack on something fun, and maybe make some friends. I don't want to start a business, and I don't care about winning a prize. I don't really want to stay up all night, either - <USER2> have a wife, and other things to do.

I thought maybe Weekend Hacker would be fun, but that seems to be full of people looking for help with their startup idea. Most of them aren't engineers. Most of the Meetups I've been to (or hosted) are full of people trying to get me interested in their startup, or recruit me. Nothing wrong with that, but I don't see myself having a beer on the weekend with any of those folks.

So, how do people do it? It's kinda happening slowly over time, through friends and partners of friends, but I wouldn't know how to actively speed it up.

</comment><comment><USER8> Last Startup Weekend I went to had 7 devs out of 110 people. Definitely an issue.

EDIT: All but one of the 11 teams were tech/programming required startups guys. I'm not talking about "Startup Weekend" as a whole, I'm talking about my experience at the event I went to.

<comment><USER9> Does Start Up weekend specifies that the start up has to do with tech? Unless you're saying that 103 people were the "idea person" I don't see what's wrong with that

<comment><USER8> I can't speak for all Startup Weekend events, but at the one I went too, every single project was a tech startup. On the team I was on, the vibe from the "idea person" was definitely "How can I get a developer to help me for free?"

<comment><USER9> from the blog post:

>Restrict to those who are there to code, design, or build something, not to write a business plan - this gives participants the freedom to work on projects that don't need to have profit potential.

That makes sense, but you know, don't restrict it to tech start ups. And from what I read at the SW website, it DOESN'T have to be tech. How were the projects from that SW you mention?

<comment><USER10> I went to one in 2012, and a majority of the projects, as well as 2 of the 3 winners were tech.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just skip these things and write code for people who will pay you, or open source something useful.

<comment><USER12> I think there's value in writing code for yourself at times. Every other time in life engineers are told by their managers, professors, and anyone else who's overseeing them what to make and do. Doing a hackathon in this format minimizes that pressure and gives people a time and place to gather and just be creative for themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you're an API provider you can do everything in this post but also say "and by the way, we will give you X free credits to use against our API if you want to build something on top of it." You still might not get as much battle hardening, etc as if it was a hard requirement, but it might totally change the dynamic.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is why I only attend university hackathons. For the most part, they are still about building cool new tech—not startups. Plus, their increasingly high admissions standards ensure that everyone who attends is either already a developer or eager to learn. Nobody walks away without coding.

One point I disagree with in the article is that cash prizes are harmful. I just don't see evidence of that—prizes at university hackathons have been getting bigger and bigger (tens of thousands of dollars) but it seems like the technical sophistication of hacks continues to rise. So long as you have good judges (ie. hackers, not marketers), large prizes just provide an awesome reward for awesome hacks.

Also, most of the shitty bizathons I've been to actually had relatively small prizes (some API credits, maybe "mentorship") relative to the major hackathons.

<comment><USER15> > _One point I disagree with in the article is that cash prizes are harmful. I > just don 't see evidence of that—prizes at university hackathons have been > getting bigger and bigger (tens of thousands of dollars) but it seems like > the technical sophistication of hacks continues to rise. So long as you have > good judges (ie. hackers, not marketers), large prizes just provide an > awesome reward for awesome hacks._

I think the point of "avoid big cash prizes" rule in the article was to foster inter-team collaboration and minimize competition. It's a good goal. On one hackaton I attended where prizes were cool but not _that_ big (items worth less than $1k each) it was not uncommon to see people spending some time talking to other teams, helping them set up, solve some obstacle they encountered or just playtesting their project.

Competition creates a bad atmosphere and it's better to reduce it to minimum. It's much more fun to care about maximizing the amount of cool projects being created than just fighting for the top spot.

<comment><USER14> > Competition creates a bad atmosphere and it's better to reduce it to > minimum. It's much more fun to care about maximizing the amount of cool > projects being created than just fighting for the top spot.

I understand that theoretical viewpoint, but I've never seen it play out that way.

Even at huge hackathons with prizes of thousands of dollars, I see lots of people helping each other across teams. At the end of the day, true hackers will like the money but also like helping out new developers.

I don't like the societal assumption that competition is automatically evil.

<comment><USER15> > _Even at huge hackathons with prizes of thousands of dollars, I see lots of > people helping each other across teams. At the end of the day, true hackers > will like the money but also like helping out new developers._

Thanks for the data point.

> _I don 't like the societal assumption that competition is automatically > evil._

The societal assumption, at least the one I grew up with, was that competition is Good and Awesome, because it drives the Great Capitalist Economy (as opposed to socialism that ended just around the time I was born). But it seems more and more evident that competition has only very limited applications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Running a Hackathon costs money.

We can have a hackathon where:

\- The costs are split up by the number of participants.

\- A bunch of teams participate.

\- Everyone builds whatever they want, and they own it.

\- There can be multiple show-and-tells, to allow teams to ask / answer questions, get to know each-other, and iterate.

\- Everyone walks away having made some wonderful new friends, having learned a thing or two, and also maybe even some useful code.

If someone else is organizing, and you're participating for free, then it will _always_ come with strings attached. Remember, if you're not the customer, then you're the product!

<comment><USER17> A Hackathon cost less money than you'd think. Typically for a day long event you can rent the place, get 3 meals, drinks and snacks including time spent for 40-50 people for about $2k. Which for a business isn't really all that much.

Disclaimer I help organize the described at the bottom of the article.

<comment><USER18> I think it depends where, when and who you are organising it for. I organised a student hackathon in London last year and it cost about £4K/$6K but we had the venue free and some sponsors paying for a meal or two. We had 150 students at the event. If the venue wasn't free we would be looking at another £2K/$3K at the least. The numbers stack up very quickly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I really think it depends on what you want to get out of a hackathon. At the end of the day you get out what you put in.

After graduating from college I spent some time going to hackathons, some of which were of the type you described. But I didn't care because I just wanted to go somewhere where I could hone my ability to think fast and ship. I got to do just that while also meeting awesome dev evangelists, eating free food, and occasionally going home with some prizes.

I also don't think the following is necessarily the right thing to do:

"Restrict to those who are there to code, design, or build something, not to write a business plan"

especially if the intent is to create "better builders, better collaborators, and better teachers."

Learning to work with the MBA type that a lot of people vilify can be a valuable skill. I think the ability to dilute business speak into features you can program or being able to communicate your complex programming ideas to someone less experienced are super valuable. And that's where I've seen a lot of hackathon pitches fall apart. Someone creates something so technical and awesome, but can't break it down into something that non-technical people or new programmers can understand. And that sucks, but being able to do so is a necessary communication skill.

I also think hackathons are a great place to find future co-founders. Maybe that's another programmer, but maybe it's someone who can help you sell your product and has a more developed business sense. Again, it all depends on why you're at the hackathon in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER20> The single biggest indicator of the quality of a hackathon is who is organizing it. I've seen countless events where the people putting on the event are doing it for selfish or greedy reasons, and 9 times out of 10 those events look like the 3 kinds the author is describing [1].

That said, there are tons of _good_ hackathons out there that actually do have the developers interests in mind. Specifically, I'd point to all the amazing things that are happening in the student space [2].

Bottom Line: Figure out who's organizing an event and use that as gauge to determine if it's worth your time.

[1] [http://theycallmeswift.com/2013/10/25/dont-throw-that- hackat...](http://theycallmeswift.com/2013/10/25/dont-throw-that-hackathon/) [2] [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/education/edlife/the- hacka...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/education/edlife/the-hackathon- fast-track-from-campus-to-silicon-valley.html?_r=0)

</comment><comment><USER21> Looking at going to battlehack (from paypal) this weekend. Wondering how it fits in to the "3 types" from the article - doesn't _seem_ to fit in to any of those 3 specifically.

<comment><USER22> Hi,

I went to BattleHack Austin two years ago (and then to the world finals in San Jose), and really enjoyed it.

I would say that it doesn't fit into any of those categories - it's not a business pitch-a-thon, PayPal doesn't own your code, and it's not a recruiting deal either. BattleHack is still the best hackathon I've ever been to.

They're doing the BattleHack hackathons to raise awareness of their developer programs with coders, for a company like PayPal, it's not a lot of money to spend.

<comment><USER21> Thanks for the info. I'm a bit concerned about the 'staying up for 30 hours' bit, but we'll see how that goes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I recently went to a hackathon where participants owned code they wrote, but no mention was made of who ideas belonged to. What category does that fall into?

Since the general HN consensus on such things is "execution > idea" is it all right if a hackathon says "We might use your idea in our products"?

PS. Obviously, it's never OK if they say "We own your idea and you can't use it anymore".

</comment><comment><USER17> A key detail that seems to be missed by this article: these are three types as a subset of hackathons. Not all have to be that way, and many are not.

</comment><comment><USER24> My biggest problem with hackathons is that they are usually student-only events, which I feel is a terrible and unnecessary restriction. I have participated in a hackathon several previous times as it was lax with its entry requirements (I was not a student but an alumnus), but their sign-up page now says it is open to undergraduates and high school students with special permission.

I have a BS and MS in Industrial and Systems Engineering and an MBA but my passion for the last few years has been anything and everything related to programming. I'm willing to travel all over the country and the world to attend these events as they are great opportunities for learning, meeting people, working with technologies that aren't available, and providing a good reason to be in front of a computer for 24 or more hours at a time. I'm willing to pay a non-student entry fee or do whatever else is necessary to help out to offset the additional cost that I would bring. Having a bunch of computer science students working together is great, but the hackathon experience can be greatly enhanced by people who have different backgrounds or industry experience, are entrepreneurial, or have connections to companies, financing, jobs, etc.

Different backgrounds bring different people and thinking together. How would having a marketer, pianist, chemist, or sports therapist change the idea generation process? Industry experience is provided on the tech side by some of the sponsors or organizers, but you will never know what software pharmaceutical companies need unless you have someone with a Doctor of Pharmacy who has been working with pharmaceutical software for several years like my one friend who attended the hackathon. You will never know what huge opportunities are available in the Department of Defense or data architecture fields unless you have someone like myself with years of experience working in those industries. Our mix of two people with industry experience (PharmD in pharmaceutical, MBA/Engineering in DoD), and students in Psychology (med. school ambitions), and traditional computer science can lead to both some wild ideas or practical software that is desired or needed in industry.

Trying to include entrepreneurs and people with business interests are another way to improve hackathons. I was really impressed that there were over 100 submitted projects for this hackathon, an incredible number and an accomplishment for a hackathon that has been growing bigger every semseter. Most of these projects will die and never be developed for in the future. And while that is a good idea for most of the hacks, some are promising for future development. I would love to see some of these hacks turn into businesses, start generating revenue, or start accumulating large user bases. This is often too much of a time/money constraint for a broke student to accommodate amongst the many classes, projects, exams, work, and debt that they have to deal with. Opening hackathons up to non-students can get entrepreneurs, funding, and people who have the time and money resources to take the project to the next level involved.

Bringing in non-students also can bring in connections to companies which can be invaluable to students. This can bring in people who have access to jobs, internships, and exclusive technologies. It also can bring experience to show students how technologies or work flows exist in industry and what to be prepared for as ideas move from one or two person teams into businesses with hundreds or thousands of employees.

I stole this off of my blog, as the concerns I had previously are the same.

[http://jbutewicz.com/hackru-fall-2014/](http://jbutewicz.com/hackru- fall-2014/)

</comment><comment><USER25> How is equity divided among the members of a team? There are many ways it could be but unless it is discussed - and agreed to - up-front, if a successful business results, or perhaps if lots of debts result, so will lawsuits.

By contrast I greatly enjoyed MacHack. It saddens me that it's not held anymore. Most people work on their own things, as individuals. The prize is an "A-Trap". It's a type of rat trap; the A-Trap was chosen because Mac OS System and Toolbox calls were implement as "A-Line Exceptions", that is, an illegal instruction, the first byte of which was 0xA.

The objective of MacHack was to hack the system in some clever way; it wasn't to start a business. It was to have fun.</comment>


A Haskell program that prints out a Perl program that prints out... - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sigfpe.com/2011_01_01_archive.html

<comment><USER2> Apparently these are called "ouroboros programs". [http://asiajin.com/blog/2009/09/22/uroboros-programming- with...](http://asiajin.com/blog/2009/09/22/uroboros-programming- with-11-programming-languages/) (which serves an empty page to me right now) used to have a period-11 cycle of programs. I wrote a period-3 program (<http://www.stratigery.com/source.html#Ouroboros>).

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://golf.shinh.org/reveal.rb?Quine/shinh+%28C+C%2B%2B+Rub...](http://golf.shinh.org/reveal.rb?Quine/shinh+%28C+C%2B%2B+Ruby+Python+PHP+Perl%29_1194650418&rb)

Here is a 396 byte C program that prints a C++ program that prints a Ruby program that prints a Python program that prints a PHP program that prints a Perl program, that prints the original C program.

Coincidentally that program is the same in all languages :) it is a polygot. This is definitely a much harder problem than just cycling through the languages...</comment>


The new Photosynth - <AUTHOR> http://photosynth.net/preview/ <comment><USER2> If you didn't bother to read the "learn more":

When in the viewer, press C to see the 3D interpretation of individual shots and M for a map of the path taken by the camera.

<comment><USER3> Controls in 3D mode: right-click and drag to move the camera, scroll to zoom. Arrow keys move the camera location.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another bit of code in this space is libmv: [https://github.com/libmv/libmv](https://github.com/libmv/libmv).

libmv's codebase seems to be forked, with an earlier version at goggle code: [http://code.google.com/p/libmv/](http://code.google.com/p/libmv/) which also contains an interesting summary of other libraries in the 3D reconstruction space. Blender also has its own fork, which it uses for matchmoving, which is the integration of animated objects into a real world scene.

In turn, libmv seems be be influenced by the work of Marc Pollefeys? The tutorial is a readable summary of how to go from a collection of 2D images to a 3D model.

[http://www.cs.unc.edu/~marc/research.html](http://www.cs.unc.edu/~marc/research.html)

[http://www.cs.unc.edu/~marc/tutorial/](http://www.cs.unc.edu/~marc/tutorial/)

[http://www.cs.unc.edu/~marc/tutorial.pdf](http://www.cs.unc.edu/~marc/tutorial.pdf)

Question: Can a knowledgeable person here suggest which codebase is the best to start experimenting with, to build an application that converts a 2D photo sequence into a dimensionally accurate 3D model?

<comment><USER5> Sure! My lab focuses on SLAM and 3D reconstruction, especially for robotic applications. We've developed a BSD-licensed C++ (w/ MATLAB wrapper) library with specific applications towards 3D reconstruction problems such as SLAM and structure from motion. It's called GTSAM [1]

We actively maintain and release new features as they are published. While we don't provide a full out of the box pipeline (yet!), there are plenty of examples and documentation which walk you though the math, implementation, and other issues. If you want to read about the graphical models underlying GTSAM, see [2]

Utilizing OpenCV for feature detection and association is pretty much all you really need to add to a program in order to recreate Photosynth using gtsam. I'd also you recommend KAZE features from a former post-doc out of our lab, it's state of the art and recently added OpenCV wrappers[3]. However, it's also trivial to integrate other sensors such as IMUs, GPS, lasers, etc. for full navigation problems.

If you wish to know more about the actual subject, I definitely recommend Hartley and Zisserman's Multiview Geometery Book[4]

[1] [https://borg.cc.gatech.edu/borg/](https://borg.cc.gatech.edu/borg/)

[2] [http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~dellaert/pub/Dellaert06ijrr.pdf](http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~dellaert/pub/Dellaert06ijrr.pdf)

[3] [https://github.com/pablofdezalc/akaze](https://github.com/pablofdezalc/akaze)

[4] [http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~vgg/hzbook/index.html](http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~vgg/hzbook/index.html)

<comment><USER6> do you think it would be possible and/or worth it to reconstruct a automotive road course? this is something i've always wanted to do. there's a ton of video online (though usually shot from inside the car.)

the one i spend the most time at is pretty flat, though. i suspect the green hills are hard to get a match on? here is an example: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyZcERAlBeE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyZcERAlBeE)

<comment><USER7> I often go on rides around mountainous areas on my motorbike with a video camera attached to my helmet (some videos here [http://www.youtube.com/user/slashtomeu/videos](http://www.youtube.com/user/slashtomeu/videos) ). Since I carry a GPS as well, I've always wondered if I could reconstruct a 3D model of the landscape I ride around in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Glad to see they're still working on this. I remember seeing a demo of this some years back and being really impressed.

A nice reminder that Microsoft really does have some great engineering talent and they can break new ground.

<comment><USER9> Microsoft is always doing incredible research, just depressing that it's rarely converted into a compelling consumer product.

<comment><USER10> Well, Ballmer's gone. So maybe they will figure out how to pull together their innovation. It is kind of deflating sometimes to realize that MS was doing something that they simply dropped the ball on. The smart phone is solidly one of those things. They dominated the PDA market prior to the iPhone coming out. All they had to do was put some focus towards it.

<comment><USER8> They were also ahead of the curve with tablets. Bill Gates demoed a tablet in 2000: [http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-248474.html](http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-248474.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Also very impressed here. However, it appears to have a huge limitation over the previous implementation: You can only move in a linear fashion though the scene. Gone is the ability to jump around in a 3D environment. At least from the first handful of examples I looked at.

Does anyone see an environment in this new version that still allows freedom of movement?

<comment><USER12> They have translation and rotation. What path can you not construct from those?

<comment><USER11> It's my understanding that you can't use them simultaneously. You have to choose one of the types: spin, panorama, walk, or wall. ([http://photosynth.net/preview/about](http://photosynth.net/preview/about))

In the previous version, random pictures around a scene could be stitched together allowing an experience you could explore. For example, one of the original, popular photosynths allowed you to explore inside an art studio. You could look up at the ceiling, walk on various paths, move close into pictures, etc. In this new version, you're stuck on rails.

tl;dr: In this version each node has two exit points: next or previous picture. In the previous version each node had an unlimited number of exit points to other pictures.

<comment><USER13> Note you can press "c" to make the camera break free of the rails

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the tip! But this allows you to move your perspective outside of the rail system, but doesn't change the fact that you only have images established on the rail system itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've been excited about this project ever since I saw the Ted talk by Blaise Agüera y Arcas. Here are some related projects.

multiple photos: [http://www.123dapp.com/catch](http://www.123dapp.com/catch)

Single photo: [http://make3d.cs.cornell.edu/](http://make3d.cs.cornell.edu/) [http://www.3defy.com/](http://www.3defy.com/) and [http://hackaday.com/2013/09/12/3-sweep-turning-2d-images- int...](http://hackaday.com/2013/09/12/3-sweep-turning-2d-images- into-3d-models/)

video: [http://www.3ders.org/articles/20130729-disney-new-image- algo...](http://www.3ders.org/articles/20130729-disney-new-image-algorithm- turns-2d-photos-into-a-3d-model.html) and [http://punchcard.com.au/](http://punchcard.com.au/)

<comment><USER15> That talk was was a lot of fun to watch. And the first half of that technology in the talk, Deep Zoom, is now open source: [http://openseadragon.github.io/](http://openseadragon.github.io/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This one is really cool [http://photosynth.net/preview/view/31e5927d-af4b-4678-8bba-c...](http://photosynth.net/preview/view/31e5927d-af4b-4678-8bba-c693983b8f2e) !

<comment><USER17> I'm sure I'm missing something with this particular one, and I'm sure it's got a lot of clever tech behind it, but is the end result actually achieving anything more than a simple video of the same walk?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It is impressive. But, I have to wonder: what does this get you above-and- beyond taking a short video of an object, and then allowing the view to "scrub" back and forth within the video?

<comment><USER2> the movement is much smother than anything I could accomplish with a cam ...

<comment><USER19> Mount it on a dolly?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> A friend wanted to know the nitty gritty details of how this new Photosynth works. I don't work on it, but I saw a talk on it this summer and I've worked on similar projects, so I wrote up all that I know/can speculate.

[http://kaflurbaleen.blogspot.com/2014/01/whats-up-with- photo...](http://kaflurbaleen.blogspot.com/2014/01/whats-up-with- photosynth-2.html)

<comment><USER21> Cool, I remember it.

Is it possible to release the source code of some of the older projects like the PhotoTour Viewer?

[http://phototour.cs.washington.edu/](http://phototour.cs.washington.edu/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Amazing stuff, and much nicer without the Silverlight requirement!

There are still some strange artefacts remaining, though. For example, on this demo - [http://photosynth.net/preview/view/c7287786-a863-4291-a291-d...](http://photosynth.net/preview/view/c7287786-a863-4291-a291-dcf466d7f8e8) \- watch the bases of the dragons as the camera pans left to right. The first two seem to stitch together fine, but the last two go wrong and bend outwards as if they are moving in the wrong direction. It's strange because other parts of the scene are perfect.

</comment><comment><USER23> seems a bit of a step back in possibilities, but with streamlined UI. With the old photosynth you could even extract the point clouds from a bunch of photos of a scene you uploaded.

[http://binarymillenium.com/2008/08/exporting-point-clouds- fr...](http://binarymillenium.com/2008/08/exporting-point-clouds-from- photosynth.html)

[http://synthexport.codeplex.com/](http://synthexport.codeplex.com/)

But making meaningful 3d triangulations out of point clouds is a whole other story.

The glitchy charme of the new pales to the wonder of seeing a explorable pointcloud created out of a pile of photos from Stonehenge.

[http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=e5c7e730-95a3-4a29-a38e-...](http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=e5c7e730-95a3-4a29-a38e-d0d23223844e)

</comment><comment><USER24> WTF, Microsoft: "Your password can't be longer than 16 characters."

<comment><USER25> same on Office 365 (if you don't use SAML)

<comment><USER26> Geez, Google, you've limited my passwords to 200 characters. What gives? Microsoft allows passphrases with SAML... though at that point (>200) it might be pass-paragraphs.

<comment><USER27> I know this is a joke, but allowing arbitrarily long passwords allow a DOS attack if your server uses bcrypt or similar (consider uploading a 1GB password, for example)

<comment><USER26> Good point. You need to draw the line somewhere. I wrote about 200 character limit Google uses because I hit it the other day. I wondered, but that makes sense. Wouldn't surprise me if they also took networking into consideration too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> My company (360 Cities) works with some of the people who are on the Photosynth team, and I have had the pleasure of talking to some of them about all the different iterations of Photosynth over the years, including this new iteration. I'll share some of my own observations (without breaking my NDA ;-)

First off, I have a ton of respect for everyone I've met and spoken with on the Photosynth team. They represent all that is great about Microsoft Research (well, Photosynth has moved to the Bing Maps department a few years ago).

The first iteration of Photosynth was the one shown by Blaise Aguera y Arcas in what is now one of the most popular TED talks of all time [1]. Basically, it automatically arranged photos in 3d space from where each picture was taken, and allowed the user to "fly" from one photo to the next, giving a real feeling of navigating through 3d space.

The prospect _and amazing, working demonstration_ of taking all the world's photos and mapping them together into a single quasi-3d space was a pretty incredible idea (for which Apple has just had a patent approved - WTF! [2]).

The Photosynth service itself in my opinion did not go far enough to combine the content of different users in order to achieve the goal achieving huge groups of images spanning very large (even city-wide) spaces. (There must have been significant usage / copyright issues which prevented a service like this from aggregating as many photos as would be required to achieve this).

On the user side, regular people had some trouble with the UI of Photosynth -- while the technology was obviously impressive, breathtaking at times, navigating this 3d space on a 2d screen is a very difficult thing to design well, and there is a learning curve. This was something which I think prevented more wide-scale adoption. (The other thing which personally turned me off was the silverlight requirement...)

Around the same time, Google built a "look around" feature in Panoramio [3] which was a very similar functionality, but remained fairly obscure, despite being eventually baked into the Panoramio layer on Google Maps/Streetview.

A couple years later, the Photosynth team built an iPhone app for stitching panoramas, and redesigned the Photosynth service to be more centered around 360° photography.

The Photosynth iPhone app was absolutely groundbreaking for its time, blowing away every comparable app in every respect (the size limitation of the output pano, as remarked elsewhere here, is small, this is mainly due to the strict RAM limitations of the iPhone, rather than any fault of the app itself). It has taken 3 or 4 years for anything to catch up to the quality and usability of the Photosynth app (Android Photosphere now has that crown).

Now, we are seeing the "New Photosynth" (which Microsoft seems to be calling "Photosynth 2" but it seems to me more like "Photosynth 3". This New Photosynth, to me, is simply awesome. What is interesting about it is that it seems to have the same guts as the original Photosynth, but the UI is completely redesigned and built in a very linear way, which is obviously addressing the original "weirdness" of the Photosynth 1 UI. This accomplishes a few things: it directs users to make a more consistent type of content (you now have 4 different types of photo sequences you can shoot), and it gives viewers one and only one way to consume that content. It also allows a better kind of "autoplay" functionality, if you want to simply watch the sequence of images without interacting with it.

What I don't like about the content that I've personally created so far is that it seems to be quite glitchy. Even when I shoot something carefully, there seem to be numerous artifacts in the 3d shapes that are created. I am guessing that this could be reduced considerably if the full resolution of the images was used for the 3d reconstruction, at the expense of more expensive computation.

All things considered, I really like where Microsoft is headed with Photosynth, and I look forward to seeing where things move.

One hint at what could be to come is that the amazing new Ricoh Theta has Photosynth support [4][5], which hopefully means that there will be some way to join together spherical panoramas into a "synth" at some point in the future, allowing a more freeform navigation within the 3d space.

[1] [http://www.ted.com/talks/blaise_aguera_y_arcas_demos_photosy...](http://www.ted.com/talks/blaise_aguera_y_arcas_demos_photosynth.html)

[2] [http://venturebeat.com/2014/01/07/apple-patent-street- view/](http://venturebeat.com/2014/01/07/apple-patent-street-view/)

[3] [http://blog.panoramio.com/2010/04/new-way-to-look- around.htm...](http://blog.panoramio.com/2010/04/new-way-to-look-around.html)

[4] [https://theta360.com/en/info/news/2013-10-07/](https://theta360.com/en/info/news/2013-10-07/)

[5] [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/photosynth/archive/2013/09/20/photos...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/photosynth/archive/2013/09/20/photosynth- for-ios-supports-the-new-ricoh-theta.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER29> Does it still require Silverlight?

<comment><USER30> No. I "click to play" plugins like Flash and Silverlight and the demos worked without my enabling any plugins.

<comment><USER29> Great, thanks. Didn't want to go to the trouble of creating an account if I couldn't use it :).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> What is the business model for this? (just curious)

<comment><USER32> Microsoft has a budget of around $9 billion dollars per year for Microsoft Research. I'm pretty sure Photosynth falls under that umbrella?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Here are two (non-new) photosynths I took while in Paris this summer:

The Louve: [http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=3d67aa96-ac60-43ee-9644-...](http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=3d67aa96-ac60-43ee-9644-637e5a52d222)

Underneath Eiffel Tower: [http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=f0f50007-42cb-4236-83a9-...](http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=f0f50007-42cb-4236-83a9-b7f84cb94af0) (look up!!)

They're very fun to take and the apps they have make it super easy to do. Curious to try these new versions (though they seem sort of more cumbersome..)

</comment><comment><USER34> Very cool, but I found the interpolation artifacts to be super distracting.

<comment><USER35> As a VJ I find the articfacts really interesting and plan on using it to generate new footage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I liked the idea, I think it's a different (not better nor worse) to explore imagery. I even found it's more intimate in some ways... like discovering some details of the images.

</comment><comment><USER37> some of these remind me of what I felt the first time I played Myst.

</comment><comment><USER38> This is really impressive, and I can see it being useful for a lot of people - the GoPro crowd, and people selling uncommon things on eBay or Etsy come to mind.

</comment><comment><USER39> In addition to being an impressive demo, the type and range of experiences represented in these is interesting. After some random clicking, I saw a:

      - walkthrough of a wealth manager's office
      - boat cruising around a marina
      - a walk through an exclusive shopping district with an Hermes and Louis Vuitton.
      - a duomo in Florence.

</comment><comment><USER40> The samples are really, really cool. But it got me thinking: aside from a bit of parallax, what's the practical difference between this and 60fps video with a smooth/intertial seek slider?

EDIT: I guess not having to use a dolly for smooth motion is a huge plus. But the tradeoff, of course, is loss of quality in the interpolated "frames".

</comment><comment><USER41> I can't wait for the next generation Richard Linklater to make an entire movie using this technology.

</comment><comment><USER35> I bet it would be an awesome experience to view those with an Oculus Rift. Even moreso in high resolution: [http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2014/01/oculus- rift](http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2014/01/oculus-rift)

<comment><USER42> Looks to me like this version of Photosynth doesn't let you look around like old versions did however and seems to follow a fixed path with fixed camera angle?

I guess the Oculus would improve the 3D aspect of it but you wouldn't be able to look around left and right while traveling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I don't get what's really cool. Viewport angle and camera path is fixed, than what's really better than just a video? Can let me know the point of this tech?

I tried pressing `c`, but it showed only some cracked images, doesn't seem really meaningful.

<comment><USER44> Try and take a sequence of ~20 photos (you can see how many photos were taken by counting the dots after you hit `m`), and stitch those into a smooth video to simulate this effect.

The smooth transitioning between the stills is the tech here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I registered, verified my e-mail, but then I opened the page and clicked the create button, I succesfully uploaded my synth, just waiting it to be preprocessed. Not sure, but it might be a way to pass the waiting for invitation.

</comment><comment><USER46> What's the difference between this and a video.

Given that most cameras nowadays record video this seems rather pointless. Only advantage I can think of is that you can normally record higher quality images with stills vs video.

</comment><comment><USER47> Hmm: no way to download the 3D objects created.

Interesting tech, but that's a real pity.

<comment><USER45> It is WebGL, it is running client side, there might be a hack, but probably hard to get.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Reminds me a lot of QuickTime VR. Anybody old enough to remember it? That was 90s tech, and worked on the Web too. It never caught on though, despite QuickTime being fairly widely deployed.

<comment><USER28> Quicktime VR was simply a 360 panorama player. (And it also did "object movies" which are just glorified slideshows, simulating different views around the circumference of an object)

I beg to differ than it never caught on ;-) full disclosure: I've based my career around it ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> my college fraternity chapter house is getting demolished and rebuilt this summer. it hit me like a ton of bricks because I have so many college memories there and was saddened I couldn't walk through it in another 20 years. I think i'll have to take a shit ton of pictures so I build a photosynth reconstruction of it :)

</comment><comment><USER33> Chrome keeps giving me the "aw snap" page when trying to view one of them.. :\

</comment><comment><USER50> The giant shadowy hand on the intro video was an interesting choice.

</comment><comment><USER51> What a great example of pushing technology further.

</comment><comment><USER52> I wonder what this technology will allow us to do?

</comment><comment><USER53> ....so it's a really glitchy video? Does it need glasses?

<comment><USER45> It is built from images. Of course there will be glitches.

<comment><USER53> My point is how is it better than simply taking a video which is also built from images.

<comment><USER45> It generates a 3D model, its purpose is not to just show around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Saw "Sign in with Microsoft" and left.

<comment><USER22> You left too soon. No sign in required. Your loss!

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I think it could do with a little bit of information on the first page to tell you what it actually is. If it was not a highly voted link from HN I'd most likely not bothered to actually figure out what it is.

Also in Chrome canary it frequently crashed the tab or gives the "WebGL hit a snag" message, which requires you to click reload before the site works properly again.

Edit: Why is this been downvoted? All you get on the first page is a large photograph and a circle with more photos. Until you click a photo, or learn more, it is not clear what the site is about...

Also, think I'm missing something because I just get a HTML5 video of a scene.

<comment><USER50> If you're using Chrome Canary, shouldn't you try regular Chrome first before you complain about bugs?

<comment><USER55> It's not a complaint and it might equally be a problem with Chrome Canary itself and have zero to do with the site.

However, I'd personally find it useful to know if my project was working in pre-release browsers, especially if it is more than your basic web app, to ensure future compatibility before that pre-release version makes it out as a stable version.</comment></comment></comment>


Does LinkedIn access your email or contact list? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/Does-LinkedIn-access-your-email-or-contact-list?share=1 <comment><AUTHOR> I'd like to know whether this is true, and if it is, how are they accessing information from a different open tab?

My hope is that the Linkedin support staff is misinformed in this case, and that the suggestions are really being generated from the other side (email correspondents uploading their contact books on Linkedin, not this particular user.) But I have also noticed suspicious suggestions on Linkedin, and am a little concerned with this support answer, to say the least.</comment>