Connecting the UK Student Tech Scene - <AUTHOR> http://ammaar.me/connecting-the-uk-student-tech-scene

<comment><USER3> UCL has been organizing well attended Hackathons, seed funding pitch competitions, partnerships with founders and accelerators as well as running its own mini incubator for the past few years. Even a quick skim on google would show a multitude of student (UCL) born startups that have succeeded: Loom, backed by Google Ventures and acquired by Dropbox this year + Vungle, raised $17MM series B this year. I understand that from a Kings perspective the tech scene looks weak, but to discredit the scene as a whole when UCL has been leading the way with significant success for the past few years, is misleading.

<comment><USER4> Similarly, the situation in Cambridge (and as I understand it Oxford) has been very solid for a very long time.

There exist Computing and Technology (CUCaTS), Computing Facility (SRCF), Technology Enterprise (CUTEC) and Enterpreneurs (CUE) societies. The latter two have fallen somewhat out of favour and notice around the Computer Lab the last few years, but are still running strong attracting tech entrepreneurs from Physics and Engineering.

There's a lot of focus on moving out to established tech companies (blame the recruitment fair and regular company events) but this outgoing year appeared to have a high fraction of the CS year attempting to work on startups in one form or another.

<comment><USER5> As someone who has been at one of those institutions and is currently at the other, I haven't noticed much in the way of hackdays at either... Maybe it's changed at Cambridge, but I didn't see much sign of brewing collaborations at the time (beyond the creative-commons-or-public-domain-only file sharing network).

In Oxford I can recommend Oxford Geek Nights ([http://oxford.geeknights.net](http://oxford.geeknights.net)). It's not student run, but sometimes has students speaking and it's always interesting.

<comment><USER4> It's improving at Cambridge, but slowly.

<comment><USER6> I heard that a third of the graduating CompSci class applied to Entrepreneur First this year?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am committee member of the PyData London Meetup and I'd argue that the tech scene in London is simply more vibrant outside of the universities at the various meetups, hacker spaces and conferences so often you are better served going to those than a University society.

There is a certain amount of red tape organising events at Universities (my basis for this is KCL and Imperial) unless they are either explicitly educational and you often have to liase with security so we've had a lot less friction by engaging tech companies to host meetings. You get the industry links by making use of their facilities, you get students, devs and business types and in all honesty companies in Silicon Roundabout are gagging to look cool and host a meetup.

Saying that, I'm about to start post-doc work at KCL (been here since Undergrad) so I'll be kicking around for the next 3 yrs so I'll be signing up.

<comment><USER8> It's a real pity though, because there is one group I never see at PyData; undergrads (and this is true for many other meetups). And that could be seen as a problem; every tech scene needs its supply of mindless idealists if it wants to produce a reliable stream of start ups.

<comment><USER7> Hey Laurie. To be honest, if the undergrads can knock out presentations as good as your presentation on DOTA2 analysis then, we, at PyData London should be actively trying to get more undergrads to come to our meetup.

An unbalanced group is, as you say, a problem. The key is to get a wide gamut; people with ideas _and_ some idea of implementation, flat-out implementation people (devs and designers), business people and investors. A lot of the undergrads I know are green but they often have a lot of energy, ideas and can be fine coders.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great post! I can completely relate to what was described in the first paragraph - before going to university my impression was that loads of people would be working on cool projects (not even necessarily tech-related) and that it would be really inspiring, but unfortunately when I got there this wasn't the case at all. I got the feeling that there was more cool tech stuff going on at London universities, but word never really got round to us. Our entrepreneurship society (Oxford Entrepreneurs, OE hereafter) seemed to be really disconnected with the 'tech society' (Oxford CompSoc) and the majority of people attending OE events were MBAs/other grad students. (The new OE committee are working hard to change this though)

I think HackCampus is a great idea and is exactly what the UK tech scene needs. We (OE) are about to hold our first ever hackathon this November open to all students at all universities, and it seems many other universities are also starting to do the same, so a way to connect UK students interested in this kind of stuff is needed now more than ever.

Best of luck to HackCampus and KCL Tech Society!

Edit: I should add that a lot of Oxford alums have gone on to do really cool stuff, but I think a lot can be done to interest more undergrads in tech/entrepreneurship.

<comment><USER10> As an Oxford grad who used to go to a lot of OE events, I agree with you completely (and have definitely encountered the OP's disappointment!). I set up my first company in Oxford just after I left a few years ago, and there was almost nobody else there - 6 months later, we decided to move to London to find a bigger tech scene.

Since, we've built a company almost exclusively out of London and Oxford technical graduates, and we've just started an internship programme this year (and they're awesome). If you'd like any involvement from inside the industry, get in touch, we're really keen to build a stronger relationship! The same goes for any technical student groups - if you're engaged enough to organise or attend tech events then you are what the London tech scene needs.

That's toby at [http://gearhart.co.uk/](http://gearhart.co.uk/) if you want to get in touch :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I went to Imperial College London, graduated last year – we've also organized a couple of hackathons in the past years, and hosted the main Seedcamp event in 2012. There is also the Imperial Ventures and Imperial Create Lab. I can say that the amount of student tech scene stuff in Imperial has increased over the 4 years I was there, during year 1 I can't really remember any events like that, so it's good the community is picking up speed in the right direction.

But as you say, what's important is that the different universities are not disconnected – organizing+advertising hackathons and hosting big events like Seedcamp is a good way to connect the students across universities.

</comment><comment><USER12> Techmeetup [http://techmeetup.co.uk/](http://techmeetup.co.uk/) already covers all of Scotland and has goodish contacts with UCL and Seedcamp and stuff...

</comment><comment><USER13> I agree that the UK Student tech scene is quite disconnected.

There are quite a few computer science oriented student societies. For instance, at York (where I did my undergrad) there's HackSoc. There's an IRC channel somewhere on freenode with computer science societies from the uk. We're not completely disconnected, but we're slowly growing to the point that we can start collaborating and having friendly competitions.

<comment><USER14> Do you have the name of that IRC channel?

<comment><USER6> details are [http://www.compsocs.uk/](http://www.compsocs.uk/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My experience with the tech scene in the UK leads me to believe that it is the class system which has to be broached in order for this to be broken wide open. Too often in English society clear class division is used to keep people out of touch with each other - I saw very clear examples of this in the hackerspace scene, wherein I noticed with great dismay the typical 'sterotype- casting' of individuals, whose technological prowess was not insignificant, working against them. The idea of "dirty student techies stinking up the lab" was far too prevalent - even in the hackerspace scene. British culture takes too much pride in its classist attitudes, as embodied in much of its culture, and I think this definitely works against any effort to build a broader community.

Generally, I'd hope that the 'tech classes' rapidly dissuade themselves of any of the so-called virtues of British classism, but this isn't something thats necessarily on the table. Too often, bigotry and prejudice gets in the way of technological progress; this is very much the case, in my experience, within the UK tech sector.

<comment><USER16> I can certainly say that I have seen very little of what you describe in the UK tech scene at least certainly not up in the North East where I am - <USER2> London is different but I can't believe it is that different.

And as far as "dirty students sinking up the lab goes", this is more likely an isolated case rather than the prevailing norm in my experience.

<comment><USER15> I think that the UK is still considered the most classist country in Europe.. to an outsider, the confusing arrays of 'types of people' that you would encounter during a trip to the UK, as described by its denizens, lends credence to this view. "Don't talk to that chav, mate!", or "yes, she's an upper-class type, went to school so-and-so", and "well, you're an engineer .. how very working class of you .." are all statements I have encountered with random people on the street during my brief visits to the UK, and it was quite unnerving just how ingrained this mode of thinking is in the populace. British TV seems to be nothing but a war of the classes.

So I'm not sure you'd understand, unless you left for a while and came back. The British have a reputation for it - this can't be because the rest of the world hates Britain for some reason (there are legitimate reasons), but has to have some bearing in the truth of the circumstance. Classism is a very real thing in the UK - _especially_ as a result of its education system, and in spite of many attempts at reform.

EDIT: An interesting article on the subject:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5165594/Britains- clas...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5165594/Britains-class-system- alive-and-well-claims-research.html)

And here:

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2303333/Great- Britis...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2303333/Great-British- Class-Survey-reveals-UK-7-social-classes-Are-precariat-new-affluent-worker- elite.html)

.. and more:

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

.. and well, this pretty much clinches it - the UK is a classist society:

[http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-22007058](http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-22007058)

<comment><USER8> Yeah, no idea what you're talking about. I'll acknowledge that I'm white, male and come from a middle class background, so yeah, pretty privileged. But when I look at who gets "stick" for their background, it's pretty universally people who come from money. Now, that's not to say that there isn't jealousy relating to upbringing; I am the product of a state school, so I am jealous of grammar/scholarship kids, and generally dismissive of private/public school kids. And schooling is significant; every September the Oxbridge recruiters begin the arduous task of trying to get more state school applicants, and that disparity does manifest itself later on in life.

However, it is never explicit. Someone saying "how very working class of you" is not something that would happen. Hell, I'd consider that person uncultured for saying that. If you really want to talk about British culture's reputation, then the first thing you should talk about is not acknowledging things, responding in a passive (aggressive) manner, maybe looking down your nose, but never ever confronting anyone.

Also, I really wonder how much British culture matters in the tech scene. I'm in London, so that probably changes my experiences, but at my start up, we have 4 Italian employees, 1 Swiss guy, and me, the sole "British" member (though half my family is Polish, so go figure). The tech scene in London is incredibly diverse, and at least in my experience, British culture is pretty far from universally prevalent.

<comment><USER15> Well ..

        ""I am the product of a state school, so I am jealous of grammar/scholarship kids, and generally dismissive of private/public school kids.""

.. this is precisely an example of the factors - class-derived - which I believe limit expansion of the student/technology scene in the UK.

<comment><USER8> Well given that, of the people I attend university with, work with and generally interact with in the general tech sphere, there are only 2 people to whom I could assign a style of school, it's not too crippling of a prejudice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> For more a startup mostly tech career fair in London there is the popular Silicon Milkroundabout. [https://www.siliconmilkroundabout.com/](https://www.siliconmilkroundabout.com/) Milkround 8 is in November.

</comment><comment><USER18> last couple of years, the 3beards have been pretty good at organising tech events like 'art hackathons' and hackathons with companies in London.

think a tech scene doesn't need to be exclusive to students.</comment>


Tracking down a memory leak in Ruby's EventMachine - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nelhage.com/2013/03/tracking-an-eventmachine-leak/

<comment><USER2> I found a bug in eventmachine during the time I spent writing em-zeromq, the eventmachine binding for zeromq. The important thing to understand here is that ZMQ is, in-essence, a userland socket. Normal sockets are efficiently monitored using the epoll system call (or one of its older variants, say select, or poll). However, as a user-land program

ZMQ 'sockets' aren't compatible with those calls, they use a userland equivalent of those kernel level edge triggered pollers. Integrating ZMQ with a traditional event library (like eventmachine) presents a problem at this point, as software like EM or Node typically require IO to be across real file descriptors from real sockets, something a userland library can't provide. The ZMQ devs however realized this was a hotly requested feature and so devised a way around this limitation.

The compatibility layer in ZMQ takes the form of performing some internal communication across traditional unix IPC, in the case using a pipe IIRC. In other words, for some of its internal messaging rather than simply use a function call, ZMQ will push data across a pipe. This pipe can then be exposed as a proxy for a ZMQ socket.

The downside of this strategy is that exposing FDs across software requires extreme care. Generally, it is assumed that _one_ piece of software will have responsibility for an FD.

The actual issue in my case was that _any_ ruby exception would cause the entire process to crash with an error about closing an already closed FD. What was happening was that given an exception _both_ ZMQ and EM were trying to shut down all the FDs they knew about. Closing an FD that's already closed causes ZMQ to assert and crash instantly. It sounds simple once you're in the right frame of mind, but it took a good number of evenings to track down to that cause. It turned out the the EM option to not shut-down FDs was non- functional in the end. A one character patch provided the fix.

</comment><comment><USER3> Like danso, I admire the detective-work here. I would like to point out, though, that XCode's Instruments utility has a fantastically useful "Leaks" mode that will identify leaked allocations, including a stack trace. It can attach to a running process and has a non-disastrous impact on performance, though like most such tools it's voracious for memory.

Other platforms likely have similar tools, though I have yet to stumble across one as easy to use.

<comment><AUTHOR> (author here) Yeah, there are a lot of such tools, and they can be invaluable. In my experience, though, if you're working with a large, complex system, including pieces like Ruby and OpenSSL which do some grody tricks internally, they'll flag lots of false positives and noise, and it takes a lot of work to get a development environment where they work well.

Also, we weren't yet sure whether this bug was reproducible in development/QA, or was only triggerable in production, so using techniques that worked directly on the running image was attractive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _"If you've stared at too many Linux coredumps, as I have, that number looks suspicious. Interpreted in little-endian, that is 0x00007f1b5358a800, which points near the top of the userspace portion of the address space on an amd64 Linux machine.

In fewer words: It's most likely a pointer."_

As someone who has not stared at any core dump for more than about 2 seconds, I admire this level of skill.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wish there were more posts like this.

<comment><USER6> Me too. I wonder what would make for more posts like this.

<comment> grey-area Go here every day and upvote interesting articles after reading them.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/newest>

<comment><USER6> No, what I'm saying (cf my other comment in this thread) is that it's actually a supply problem.

<comment> grey-area Not sure I agree there. There are lots of interesting posts which sink on that queue and fall off it without getting sufficient votes to be seen, while less interesting but more controversial stuff floats to the top. All it would take is a few score more people voting technical stories up consistently to change the story mix.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is slightly off-topic, but I worked on a Ruby project where we did something just like this:

"It was easy enough to work around the leak by adding monitoring and restarting the process whenever memory usage grew too large"

I was surprised, because I can not think of any other language and/or framework where "just restart the process" is done so often. I mean, this is not a common attitude among Java programmers, I don't think it is common among C programmers, and I don't think it is common among Python programmers. But it does seem to be fairly standard in the Ruby community. David Heinemeier Hansson admitted this used to happen with Basecamp:

[http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/posts/31-myth-2-rails- is-...](http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/posts/31-myth-2-rails-is-expected- to-crash-400-timesday)

Can anyone else tell me of a community where this is done so commonly?

<comment><USER8> Hacker News itself does this.

> We restart HN every 5 or 6 days, or it gets slow (memory leaks). [1]

pg went into more depth about this somewhere, but I don't have the link on hand at the moment. Essentially, the software running it is riddled with memory leaks, but it's more time-efficient to simply reboot it every so often than it is to actually go in and fix it.

[1] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4730251>

<comment><USER9> That might work for HN, but it doesn't really matter if HN is down for a while. For something like Basecamp (the original 'restart it every few minutes' example, it does not seem nearly as professional.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There are two things I really like about this walkthrough:

1\. It shows how bugs can be something quite conceptually simple

2\. It shows the value of logical, detective-like thinking in tracking these bugs.

Even as a programmer, I still think of bug-hunting as something requiring an encyclopedia knowledge of the trivial and arcane. Obviously, it looks easier in hindsight, but the OP does a great job of demonstrating how you can discover a much-overlooked flaw with the right deductive thinking (and experience with profiling tools)

<comment><USER11> Deduction is great, but what I read here was how much experience matters in debugging. You have to know what to look and test for to provide fodder for your reasoning capabilities, or else you're just shooting in the dark. The OP here had a plan informed by what I'm guessing are years of experience solving this kind of thing ("It's probably small objects. I should dump the core and look for repeating memory patterns."). Then there's a lot of accumulated wisdom that reprioritizes your search as you go along: "That looks like a flag because flags tend to look like that.", etc.

I have no doubt that the OP is good at reasoning logically, but the take-home lesson here is, _if you want to be good at debugging, do a lot of debugging_.

<comment><USER10> Yes, this is true, so as I said, debugging looks easier in hindsight, especially someone else's hindsight :)

Summarizing the reasoning process:

1\. The program's object space doesn't contain an absurd number of small objects, so inspect the core dump

2\. 95% of the core dump is leaked objects, so a random sample should contain clues to the composition of the leaked objects.

3\. A repeated pattern in every leaked object indicates a common pointer, i.e. a single type of object.

4\. The signature helps find what file in the program is being referenced, which indicates that the pointer's object type is a BIO struct

5\. This kind of leak isn't possible in straight Ruby. So between OpenSSL and EventMachine's C/C++ code, the latter is more likely to have something awry.

6\. Search the EM code for BIO constructors

7\. Check each constructor call to see if the BIO instance is ultimately freed

\---

Steps 3 and 4 are the most arcane to me...I am pretty sure I do _not_ know enough about memory to look at a hex signature and realize where in the address space it refers to, or even the significance of it.

<comment><USER12> I am familiar with step 3, but I don't even know where to begin with step 4. I guess it'll remain a mystery... 4ever.

<comment><USER13> The reasoning is reasonably well explained in the article, I think?

Noting there is an identical pointer in each object, assume this is a pointer to some kind of type definition struct. What will this have in it? There'll likely be a type name, some function pointers for standard operations, maybe a link to any more definitions, that kind of thing. This kind of arrangement is just something you do in C and C++. It's very common.

So take a look at what's at that address, under the assumption it's just a block of pointers. And then look at the first pointer (0x401 is obviously not a pointer). And in this case he got lucky, because it points to a suggestive string. (It could just as easily have pointed to another type definition, or something random. Though it's not uncommon for descriptors to have the name in the first field or two.)

Object type names are usually string literals so it's likely to point into the data segment of an EXE or DLL. (Maybe on Linux you can guess that from the address as well.) That's what the maps thing is all about - figuring out where the string might come from as a way of narrowing down the search.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> THANK YOU - after looking at the heap perspective, and valgrind perspective, I've exhausted options looking at a memory leak in our production environment. This is another avenue. AWESOME.

</comment><comment><USER15> I noticed a same kind of leak in one of our apps and this post was more than worth of gold on how to hunt it down.

</comment><comment><USER16> Now if there were an online course where you could learn this kind of stuff I would be signed up so fast physicists would be re-evaluating general relativity.

We need some online courses dedicated to not-beginners :)

</comment><comment><USER17> Amazing post. How much time did it take to debug and identify the issue

<comment><USER12> They said the overall process took 4 to 6 hours.</comment></comment>


A Safer-For-Work "MVP" - <AUTHOR> http://frankcaron.com/Flogger/?p=5624

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately, this misses the point of the MVP concept, and falls exactly into the trap that Lean Startup is trying to get you to avoid.

An MVP isn't a crappy product, it's an answer to a question: should I go to the next step?

Sometimes the next MVP step can be just a button that does nothing. Sometimes it's a concierge service. Sometimes it's a small bit of functionality and measurement.

The entire point of this concept is to avoid doing unnecessary work. Building a product that can eat, shit, fuck and die "out of the gate" is the very definition of waste - the exact kind of waste that Eric Aries rightly advises against.

None of those four activities are inherently necessary to serve the purpose of an MVP, which is not to make money, not to have solid support services, not to please the user and not (emphatically not) to have a sensible end-of-life plan for a product that may never even be built! The purpose of an MVP is to answer a simple question: is it worth going to the next step?

<comment><USER3> ...which is why MVPs are more or less useless within the context of larger companies.

Larger companies often have that down. They know how to identify a market need. It is rare that a larger company is going to go into a market that hasn't already shown some sort of proof.

It is not guaranteed that the public will want _your_ product, but an MVP isn't going to do much there anyway.

The MVP is for small companies for multiple reasons.

What the article outlines is not a bad first approximation for potential new products in larger organizations.

<comment><USER2> Are you suggesting that large companies never build products that are useless? Never launch anything that nobody uses? Never waste effort?

If they do, then perhaps they should focus their development on waste reduction, rather than prematurely optimise for problems which aren't there yet, and which may never exist, like end-of-lifing a product that doesn't even exist yet...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > _Ultimately, building a product that can ESFD out of the gate seems like a > much more sound goal and a better goalpost—and, importantly, one that > doesn't create an argument over what "viable" really means._

It's certainly clear that this (a) isn't minimal, and (b) aims to be viable. So really it's one classic approach to building a product, discarding the advice of the Lean Startup movement.</comment>


Making Badger crash resilient with ALICE - <AUTHOR> https://blog.dgraph.io/post/alice/ <comment><AUTHOR> This post explains issues encountered when writing data to file system, and how Badger was checked and fixed to deal with these issues; using a tool called ALICE. Corresponding paper: [https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/osdi14/osdi14...](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/osdi14/osdi14-paper- pillai.pdf)</comment>


Ask HN: Is Telegram better than WhatsApp? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> It depends on what you value.

\- If you value features, then Telegram is surely ahead of Whatsapp in almost every aspect.

\- If you value the encryption, I would trust Whatsapp more than Telegram. Telegram did some strange stuff with their custom cryptography invented by "rockstar mathematicians".

\- If you value not giving metadata to the US / to Facebook, then don't go with Whatsapp.

\- On the other hand, if you value having less metadata stored, then Whatsapp is probably ahead of Telegram.

If you value privacy, then both aren't good. They both put usability and features before privacy. Telegram was once branded as "the private messenger", but later rebranded as "the fast messenger". Now it says "a new era of messaging" on their website.

Telegram causes tons of metadata. All conversations and contacts are stored on their servers, which is closed source. Their multidevice system is built in a way that you will get access to all historic conversations if you manage to add a new device to the account (e.g. through SS7). Many of their latest feature (like games, payment, etc) cause a lot of additional metadata, some of which can be retrieved by third parties (e.g. by the game developers).

I'm biased (full disclaimer: I work for Threema), but if you value privacy, then go for a messenger like Threema, where the first priority is always privacy (e.g. no phone number required, no metadata or log storage, decentralized groups, and end-to-end encrypted decentralized profile pictures, the latter being something that no other mobile messenger does as far as I know). It has a clear business model and the protocol can be verified (even though the app is not open source).

Besides that biased suggestion, you might also be well off with something like Signal, although they're based in the US (secret court gag orders possible) and require you to give them your phone number (metadata).

 _(Edit: Formatting)_

<comment><USER3> Why does Threema not use the Signal Protocol? Lack of an open source protocol makes it a non start for most uses of this. The protocol can not really be "verified" in any real sense. You can check that you can decrypt the message with nacl. All this doesn't show anything about a lack of bugs or backdoors.

Google and Facebook both decided to use the Signal protocol. Why should we trust a small company to do this correctly the first time? Without even being able to check what they are doing?

<comment><USER2> Threema predates the Signal protocol.

There is an open source re-implementation of the Threema protocol obtained by reverse engineering: [https://github.com/blizzard4591/openMittsu](https://github.com/blizzard4591/openMittsu) There is also an (incomplete) implementation in Go: [https://github.com/o3ma/o3/](https://github.com/o3ma/o3/) Note that Threema does not disallow reverse engineering in their terms of service.

The fact that OpenMittsu can properly encrypt and decrypt messages that are compatible with the Threema apps should be proof that the implementation is correct. Also, since Threema is financed by selling the app with no external investors, there should be more incentive to stick to their promises than to cheat on their privacy-sensitive users.

And even if the apps and the server were open source, unfortunately it would still not be possible to verify that the version on Google Play / iTunes is the same as the published source code. I'm not aware of a way to create reproducible builds on these app stores either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Telegram is not connected to Facebook while Whatsapp is. This makes Whatsapp a no-go for many people, me being one of them. While Telegram's "Russian roots" seem to cause others to doubt about its trustworthiness I don't see this as a problem. From what I gather, Pavel Durov (the man behind Telegram, former founder of VKontakte) is not on friendly terms with the current Russian regime so it would take a rather elaborate conspiracy theory to have him collude with the Kremlin.

Apart from that Telegram is fast, reliable and flexible and it treats Linux as a first-class citizen - maybe partly due to its Russian roots?

So, Telegram. Before it came around I used my own XMPP-server with diverse clients but Telegram has the advantage of being much more accessible to those less computer-savvy. I still have this server and can switch back to it any time I want but for now I'm happy with Telegram.

<comment><USER5> > So, Telegram. Before it came around I used my own XMPP-server with diverse > clients but Telegram has the advantage of being much more accessible to > those less computer-savvy.

Is this still true now that we have <[https://conversations.im/>](https://conversations.im/>)? Most people use messengers only on their phones, anyway.

<comment><USER4> It is. My father _loathes_ mobile devices (or rather the stranglehold they seem to have on some people) but he has no qualms against using a PC. I converse with him daily through Telegram. My mother uses Telegram as well, on both her mobile as well as a tablet and her PC.

<comment><USER6> There's plenty of nice XMPP clients for desktop, though. I do agree, however, that there is a void to be filled by an XMPP client with good discovery.

The latency and battery problems everyone was blaming are solved now. The missing piece is this:

A way to provide XMPP service for any address, in particular gmail addresses, without both touching any DNS config and without any support from whoever controls the domain (RIP Google Talk).

Basically from UX perspective:

1) User downloads an app (mobile or desktop).

2) User confirms email address via either email confirmation (it's good enough for SSL, so…) or OAuth flow

3) That's it.

4) Bonus: For OAuth flow user has prepopulated address book.

Behind the scenes at step 2 a unique ID is associated with the email address. Then other clients resolve this via something, DHT, blockchain, whatever.

This introduces some trusted oracle that assists in discovery, but keeps everything else decentralized.

Build this and it can certainly compete with Telegrams of this world.

Unfortunately, I don't think Keybase can be compatible by itself with email or phone № proofs. Perhaps if they explicitly add support for oracles, that would be cool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I use both of them.

To my mind Telegram is a nice example of how to do things right. It's fast (in all senses), it's reliable and generally pleasant to use. It can be secure if you want it to :)

Not that WhatsApp is slow or not reliable. I can't formulate it but still I do like Telegram more. All the above is just my overall impression.

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

Speaking of security I'd like to admit that I'm not a terrorist or a serial killer so maybe I'm a bit out of this problem. I agree that it's generally bad to spy on regular citizens but at the same time it's obviously even worse to have negotiations regarding terroristic acts or other ways to commit a crime.

Personally I'm almost O.K. with government spying on me unless it tries to sell me goods and services =)

<comment><USER8> Or tries to put words you don't even remember into context, or new administration chases you for your older ideas and puts you on a list. Good for you living in centuries-stable country.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Yes, for the first time: a great desktop client for Linux and I have friends that actually use it. extremely stable software and it behaves well.

</comment><comment><USER10> The thing that makes me use Telegram more than Whatapp are the desktop clients[1] and the flawless desktop-mobile integration. Works better than any other chat platform out there, IMHO.

1\. [https://desktop.telegram.org/](https://desktop.telegram.org/)

<comment><USER11> I'm quite happy with the Wire desktop client (stand-alone, unlike WhatsApp). Also usable without phone number.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you want your data to end up managed by the US you can use WhatsApp, if you want it to end up in Russia you can use Telegram. They are very similar in features, but I'm not a fan of Telegram storing all the conversation in their server.

<comment><USER13> Small correction.

With Telegram your data ends up in Germany.

They are Berlin based and against the current Russian government AFAIK.

<comment><USER8> They are ignorant to the point that I simply can't understand. Durov is in 'fuck you and die sooner' relation with russian goverment, but people still claim that Telegram is under their control. Right now we are at risk of losing Telegram if he will not provide server location info to FSB in few weeks, and it seems Durov is ready to lose russian market completely to protect it from these guys.

I actually trust whatsapp way less, simply because it has NO problems with russian special forces, which became very high-tech last years. This alone is a big red flag today.

<comment><USER14> >Right now we are at risk of losing Telegram if he will not provide server location info to FSB in few weeks, and it seems Durov is ready to lose russian market completely to protect it from these guys

Do you have a source for this?

<comment><USER8> [https://m.vk.com/wall1_677448](https://m.vk.com/wall1_677448)

As for goverment intentions, I have no direct link, but those who simply ignored their demands were blocked. We wait and see what happens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Really depends on your objective measure of "better".

Faster load time? Better uptime? Less data leakage to Facebook? Etc.

This practice of defining "better" is a great habbit to cultivate not only in your conversation but in your thinking too.

<comment><USER16> If all your friends/family/contacts are on Telegram, then Telegram is better. If all your friends/family/contacts are on WhatsApp then WhatsApp is better.

SMS is the only other message platform where a few of my social circle bleeds out of my preferred messaging platform (iMessage).

The best IMHO is where the people you want to talk to are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Telegram and Whatsapp are pretty interchangeable on feature set TBH. The support for bots in Telegram is nice, but Whatsapp currently has more user share - which is crucial.

Another interchangeable from user experience is Signal. I'm seeing more growth in Signal, which is great - and I trust it more than Telegram and Whatsapp combined.

<comment><USER18> I kind of lost my trust for Signal when moxie said it was not OK[1] that a fully free and open source fork of their client (built to remove the Google Play Services depency back then) was using their servers.

I've read the discussion and I find moxie's arguments pretty weak in this matter.

[1] [https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco...](https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issuecomment-217211165)

EDIT: spacing

<comment><USER19> How is it weak to say that he doesn't want this because he doesn't want to have to worry about supporting third party apps on his servers?

<comment><USER18> As the github user mimi89999 pointed, moxie wouldn't have to support LibreSignal directly, it behaves like a normal Signal client and there would probably be no impact in his servers at all because there was a very limited number of LibreSignal users.

<comment><USER17> Ah! But what if the non-official client causes a DoS of the server....

... then write server software that isn't vulnerable.

I have to agree... mandating what client software is used is a bit disappointing from moxie... I thought the world learned this lesson from Pidgin etc.

Next he'll say he only wants to support Chrome for their website.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Yes, constantly adding new innovative features which WhatsApp will then copy. Today is video messages, which look great.

Have the option of secret chats, which I believe is proper E2EE. But to be honest, this isn't my biggest worry anyway.

Can join plenty of communities for lots of discussion.

Great searching features for old conversations.

Desktop client is great and available for Linux. Also supports voice calling now from desktop.

But most importantly, you can have more than one device per phone number! Crazy, right?!

</comment><comment><USER21> If you have an iPad you have no choice: you can't use WhatsApp on it. Even web vesion is not available (you'll be redirected to AppStore).

BTW that's not the main reason why I use Telegram for several years as my primary messenger.

<comment><USER22> afaik you still require a phone number also for telegram :(

<comment><USER21> That's true. But once registered you can use Telegram on any device. That's not true for WhatsApp: they have app only for iPhone and you can't run it on iPad even in compatibility mode.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Telegram rolls their own non-standard crypto protocol as I understand it. This is a bit of a no-no when it comes to security. More importantly; chat's arent' end-to-end encrypted by default (I can't find a way to enable it in the web- app), which means the telegram-whatsapp comparison makes no sense. Whatsapp is secure, telegram is not.

<comment><USER23> Also; end-to-end encrypted chats in telegram (they call them "secret chats") won't follow you between devices. A secret chat started on one device, won't be accessible from another. This makes them far less useful, and dissuades users from using them. Again; comparing whatsapp to telegram in terms of security is apples vs oranges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> In what regard?

I use both of them consistently.

Telegram is full of nice features and their desktop client is well done.

Whatsapp doesn't have as many features but I feel far more secure and private in there.

<comment><USER25> For security and privacy, neighter is a good option. If you compare Telegram and Riot, Telegram wins hands down from a UX point of view. Riot is seriously lacking in this department, but it offers true end to end encryption with multiple devices by default, so if that matters to you, that is the best choice.

<comment><USER26> _> Riot is seriously lacking in this department, but it offers true end to end encryption with multiple devices by default, so if that matters to you, that is the best choice._

What about Wire?

<comment><USER27> Wire is still improving quickly and it looks very promising, but this ([https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/secure- messaging-...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/secure-messaging- app-wire-stores-everyone-youve-ever-contacted-in-plain-text)) is reason enough for me to avoid them for now. Signal is still the best secure messenger in my opinion.

<comment><USER25> Indeed. There is no reason to store that what so ever. Idealy, messaging is fully distributed, secure, and anonymous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Telegram works without a smartphone, whatsapp doesn't.

<comment><USER29> Anyone has used the new opera browser, from which one can use whatsapp ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I've been using Telegram daily for 1-2 years now, I like them both but (1) I think Telegram's UX is superior, and (2) I get why WhatsApp's desktop app works the way it does [i.e. tunnel stuff through your phone], but I don't like using it.

</comment><comment><USER31> Define "better". If all your friends use one, then that is probably better for you. There is also functionality differences between the two (mentioned by others), which might force your hand.

That said, there are other quantifiable measures. In terms of security, Telegram has two main drawbacks:

1) it supports insecure chats - which means that for many (especially non- technical) users, they won't use the end-to-end encrypted messaging at all

2) whilst the encryption algorithms they use are standardised, the protocol they uses to transfer the messages is not well understood by the cryptographic community - and when it has been analysed, well-known flaws have been found [1].

In comparison, WhatsApp also makes use of standardised encryption algorithms, but also uses the Signal protocol - which has been studied by multiple groups, with better outcomes (such as [2]). One drawback to WhatsApp is they will generally make security decisions that are primarily based around avoiding sacrificing usability - if that is a problem, then perhaps Signal[3] or Wire[4] is a better choice.

On the encryption debate, using Russian algorithms vs US (Belgian) algorithms is somewhat academic - I believe that both are considered by the wider academic community to be strong when correctly used. I don't believe there is any evidence that Telegram or WhatsApp are incorrectly using them (beyond the attack found against Telegram, which may have been fixed by now?). This is the mostly the same for considerations about data storage location - if end-to-end encryption is enabled in Telegram, they are roughly equivalent.

[1] [https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/1177.pdf](https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/1177.pdf)

[2] [https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/1013.pdf](https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/1013.pdf)

[3] [https://whispersystems.org/](https://whispersystems.org/)

[4] [https://app.wire.com/](https://app.wire.com/)

</comment><comment><USER32> they have an entire API be explored: [https://core.telegram.org/](https://core.telegram.org/)

meanwhile whatsapp have this: [https://www.whatsapp.com/faq/en/android/28000012](https://www.whatsapp.com/faq/en/android/28000012)

</comment><comment><USER33> Certainly not if one of your main concerns is the privacy of your message content. WhatsApp uses the Signal protocol; Telegram uses its own homebrew encryption protocol that has not been well vetted.

<comment><USER34> AFAIK Telegram is banned in a number of countries for the reason of being secure and not letting authorities monitor what people are messaging about.

<comment><USER33> That's not evidence that its encryption algorithm is well designed or secure.

<comment><USER34> it is circumstantial evidence. Isn't it should be a red flag if one messenger is prohibited in a country with an authoritarian regime, and the other is not?

I mean that's enough for my social messaging. If I'd need to transfer some top secret information, I would use neither of them.

<comment><USER33> > Isn't it should be a red flag if one messenger is prohibited in a country > with an authoritarian regime, and the other is not?

No.

<comment><USER34> If you want to use less information than available for your decisions, it's your choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Probably... but who cares? My friends are in WhatsApp and I use the app to talk to my friends. I wish I could use Telegram, but I feel so lonely there.

I am sure there are better apps there that can fulfill better your needs. There are apps with better encryption and so on. It depends for what you want it. It is hard so say what is better, it depends on the person and its needs, but at the end if your need is to talk with your firends and your friends are in Whastapp. Then whatsapp is the best for you.

<comment><USER36> This is a good point. I love telegram, but can't completely give up whatsapp because I have a few friends who just won't use telegram. I really wish they would move to telegram, but they're stubborn, and they in turn have friends who are only on whatsapp, and so on and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Telegram is far from perfect, according to this investigation:

[http://www.cryptofails.com/post/70546720222/telegrams- crypta...](http://www.cryptofails.com/post/70546720222/telegrams- cryptanalysis-contest)

Why not use, say, Ricochet? Or any other secure messenger ([https://prism- break.org/en/all/#instant-messaging](https://prism-break.org/en/all/#instant- messaging))

<comment><USER38> Why isn't Signal on the prism break page?

<comment><USER37> [https://github.com/nylira/prism- break/issues/1667](https://github.com/nylira/prism-break/issues/1667)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> You can use telegram without a phone. If you want to use WhatsApp on the PC, your mobile phone must be online.

Last year I lost access to my WhatsApp profile simply because I changed country and reset my phone without transferring the number to a local number first. Support couldn't help.

This kind of situation wouldn't happen with telegram. Just login with username / password online.

</comment><comment><USER40> Telegram has great features. It's fast, available on every platform, and the clients are open source. I've had good uptake on it among friends and family, especially with the option of easy web and desktop clients.

As others have said it's not as theoretically secure as WhatsApp or (especially) Signal. But I think it benefits from being the main product of a company that is totally focused on messaging, not on advertising (see all of Facebook and Google's messengers). The experience is great and even as they add features, they manage to keep things clean and stay out of your way, so you can ignore all the new features and just use it for simple stuff that it does really well.

That said, I haven't used WhatsApp much because I don't know many people who do. It comes down to where the people you want to talk to are, and if you can influence them to go elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER41> I love Telegram. It is a true joy and my circle of friends are enthusiastic fans.

</comment><comment><USER42> I am using Telegram from over two years.

Pros:

\- End to end encrypted secret chats

\- Awesome bots and the bot platform

\- Open protocol so we can implement third party clients. So is available on any new platform (Ubuntu phone, FirefoxOS, Linux, Command line, web,...).

\- Recent improvements like end-to-end encrypted audio calling (Not sure if Whatsapp calls are encrypted)

\- Many small features that make me happy like we can lock the app with password, customize interface, etc.

Cons:

\- Not many users (On the contrary I like it as there is not much noise)

\- No video calling

\- There are some reports doubting their encryption

<comment><USER11> > \- End to end encrypted secret chats

As an option, not by default.

<comment><USER42> Yep, I agree. I personally like it being optional. Not end-to-end encrypted has an advantage of syncing messages to all other devices and use secret chats when privacy is more important than syncing.

Another feature I missed is ephemeral messages in secret chats: We can have messages automatically deleted after certain time (Although I wish the time settings are more fine grained).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Riot on your phone works ok too for encrypted messaging and a lot more interoperability. [http://www.titus-stahl.de/blog/2016/12/21/encrypted- messenge...](http://www.titus-stahl.de/blog/2016/12/21/encrypted-messengers- why-riot-and-not-signal-is-the-future/)

</comment><comment><USER44> Not really. What I missed most in Telegram was "delivered to device" status. While they claim such information wouldn't tell which of the recipient's devices received the message, I see it more as laziness on their side. They could have aimed for "delivered to _any /one_ device" or "delivered to the _default_ device". I personally care about whether a message was delivered (and the recipient would eventually look at their phone) or the server is down, recipient doesn't have a data connection etc. and I can try different communication methods. A "read" status is nice but the people I usually talk to tend to reply anyway.

In terms of message storage (ignoring government requests here), Telegram servers need to store them so that they can be provided to different clients/devices. For WhatsApp, OTOH, there are primary communication devices (phones) with end-to-end encryption and secondary clients that connect to the primary device to access the messages (rather than getting them from WhatsApp's servers). End-to-end encryption is available on Telegram as well but AFAIK you lose the ability to use secondary clients.

<comment><USER45> But...they do have a delivered status. I think it's "delivered to the servers" (probably doesn't work in "secret chats"), but it fulfils the same goal. Edit: It does work in secret chat as well

And yes, Telegram has an option (a default state actually) to store the messages on their servers, WhatsApp doesn't have that. Beyond "E2E should be on by default", I don't see how this point is for WhatsApp.

<comment><USER44> "delivered to server" is different from "delivered to device". Let's say my friend is abroad with no roaming, I have no idea whether a message was delivered to him/her or not. WhatsApp has both.

As I wrote, I think (I might be wrong though) that if you enable E2E encryption on Telegram you can no longer use additional/desktop client.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> This highlights a major issue with ALL messaging apps, namely that the provider owns the clients AND the backend.

Distributed open-source clients that use end-2-end encryption over third party messaging channels is the future of secure messaging.

<comment><USER47> It is? It looks more like the past... "MPP is an example of a federated protocol that advertises itself as a "living standard." Despite its capacity for protocol "extensions," however, it's undeniable that XMPP still largely resembles a synchronous protocol with limited support for rich media, which can't realistically be deployed on mobile devices. If XMPP is so extensible, why haven't those extensions quickly brought it up to speed with the modern world?". See [https://whispersystems.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is- moving/](https://whispersystems.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/) and disagree, deny or be sad if you want.

Personally, I'm sad.

<comment><USER23> In software in general, the past is the future. Things were going great, then everything went to shit in the 2000'nds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> As for me, I use Telegram and I am happy with it! It's the best messaging app I've ever used. But it's only my opinion, you should try it and decide for yourself.

</comment><comment><USER49> I don't understand your question. Did you want to ask one of those?

* What is the difference between WhatsApp and Telegram?

* Which of both do you prefer for your personal use?

* For whom are those messengers suited?

</comment><comment><USER50> One point: Telegram has no _default_ end-to-end encryption. This, by itself, is the major selling point for Whatsapp (even if Facebook collects metadata).

<comment><USER51> Whatsapp then syncs the messages with iCloud as plain text by default, so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Yeah, though it sucks both require a phone & sim card

</comment><comment><USER34> I use a number of telegram bots, which took very little time to write. The bot api is super easy and straight forward.

I also use it for most of my communications.

</comment><comment><USER32> For me the only thing missing on Telegram is "people". My friends are on WhatsApp, which is EXTREMELY popular here on Brazil. Sadly.

</comment><comment><USER53> IMHO Yes.

</comment><comment><USER54> Telegram is more fun (bots and stickers), but WhatsApp is more secure (no messages on server, no rolled-your-own-crypto).

</comment><comment><USER55> Telegram is 10 times better than whatsapp.

</comment><comment><USER56> None of them have good call quality. I haven't tried Threema.

<comment><USER57> I actually use Threema. However there is no call option and I haven't figured out if they plan to implement one. However the quality of voice messages is pretty good seen that every message is end2end encrypted...

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> WhatsApp is E2E encrypted. So even FB cannot read the messages. The encryption technology is an open source peer reviewed Signal system. Seems privacy friendly to me.

Telegram has Russian roots and their encryption system is closed sourced.

Am I missing something?

<comment><USER59> WhatsApp is owned by facebook, the telegram team is not very loyal to the government, Telegram can send huge files. Telegram has end2end encryption disabled by default and it does not work across multiple devices. (How is whatsapp here? does it even have a Desktop Client?)

Your points still stand true though.

<comment><USER19> Yes. WhatsApp has a desktop client (web.whatsapp.com). End 2 end still works because it goes through your phone. So if your phone is off you can't use the desktop client.

<comment><USER60> Thats like remote play, not a desktop client.

<comment><USER19> How is it remote play? It is a full web client.

<comment><USER60> Turn off your phone and lets see how that "full web client" behaves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> On every front except user numbers

</comment><comment><USER62> yes. latest updates demonstrate how far they are ahead. i find the bot platform superb

</comment><comment><USER62> yes, far superior , latest updates demonstrates this again.

</comment><comment><USER63> yes

</comment><comment><USER64> yes

</comment><comment><USER65> It should be 'than WhatsApp' and not 'then WhatsApp' :)

</comment><comment><USER66> yes. heaps.

</comment><comment><USER67> Yes.</comment>


Enzyme v3 released - <AUTHOR> http://airbnb.io/enzyme/ <comment><USER2> The adapter system is super interesting: [https://github.com/airbnb/enzyme/blob/master/docs/guides/mig...](https://github.com/airbnb/enzyme/blob/master/docs/guides/migration- from-2-to-3.md#configuring-your-adapter)

This might be the way to go for complex dependencies like React where APIs move in and out of the main package, or could be implemented by third parties (like how Preact can supply _render_ and _createElement_ in a mostly- compatible way).

It also makes clear that semver dependencies in package.json are insufficient to describe the library combinations that work in the main package.

</comment><comment><USER3> Enzyme + Jest snapshots are the best UI testing system that I've ever used!

</comment><comment><USER4> Enzyme is wonderful software. It makes it so much easier to test my React apps.</comment>


Six4Three exec "panicked" in UK MP's office, gave up Facebook internal files - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/11/six4three-exec-panicked-in-uk-mps-office-gave-up-facebook-internal-files/ <comment><AUTHOR> What I found particularly interesting was that the Six4Three exec apparently had the Facebook files in his laptop's local Dropbox folder.

It's also still not clear how the DMCS committee knew theat the Six4Three guy was in the UK.</comment>


Show HN: Smashlists – Todoist companion that notifies stakeholders of done tasks - <AUTHOR> https://www.smashlists.com <comment><USER2> So is it basically Checklistomania? Would love to see a demo without having to create an account.

<comment><AUTHOR> Todoist is a centralized todo list application. What my app does is hooks into their API, pulls out the completed items and sends an email digest to the address of your choice based on the frequency that you choose.

The premise is, if you already use todoist (or wish to start using it), then you get generate automated reports to stakeholders of the tasks you completed during the day, week, or month. There are other services that do this (IE idonthis), however it requires that you manually enter in the things you did.

It's hard to demo something that involves email, but I plan to add some screenshots to the landing page to make it more clear, I just haven't had time to do it.

In the meantime, here is a screenshot of the app and a sample email that would be delivered: [http://imgur.com/a/X1I5v](http://imgur.com/a/X1I5v)</comment></comment>


The Shut-In Economy (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/matter/the-shut-in-economy-ec3ec1294816 <comment><USER2> Does anyone else actually enjoy going to the grocery store or walking to a local place to pick up food? What, exactly, are people doing that gives them so little free time that this is necessary? And why aren't people talking to each other?

I seriously don't understand the mentality that working all the time is good for you. I find that I figure out solutions to problems I'm having not by banging my head against them all the time, but from relaxing, walking, running, biking, shopping, reading books, and all the other "non-productive" things that normal people do.

Is Silicon Valley really like this? It sounds more like a dystopia than a utopia.

<comment><USER3> > Does anyone else actually enjoy going to the grocery store or walking to a > local place to pick up food?

No, I hate it. Supermarkets especially are a horrible place, they are way too crowded and I don't like being in situations like that. I will cycle to the grocery store and if I see there's a long line for checkout I'll reverse course and try at a later time in the hope there's less people.

I do my grocery shopping stormtrooper-style. I'll be in and out in as little time as possible (think 3-5 minutes for a typical shopping trip).

> What, exactly, are people doing that gives them so little free time that > this is necessary?

Stuff in grocery stores costs money, you get money by having a job.

> I seriously don't understand the mentality that working all the time is good > for you.

And yet you claim not to understand why people hate doing more work ?

<comment><USER2> Well, there you go. You just explained why you don't like going out; it's because you don't like being in situations with lots of people around.

I'm personally not like that (used to be, but with a lot of effort, got over it), but it's good to see someone else's perspective.

<comment><USER4> I think the other reason was more important... People see chores as work, and have more enjoyable things they could be doing.

<comment><USER2> There's a certain zen in being able to enjoy doing your chores. I think learning to change yourself so you don't dread chores is important self-work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A couple months ago I asked this question on Reddit:

 _> Does anyone have ideas how to write a utopia that would fulfill people's need to be needed by each other, rather than just their material needs?_

And got an amazing response from user "fubo":

 _> Cross OKCupid with TaskRabbit: the AI tells you what favors to do for people to get you to love each other._

I wish the internet would grow into something like that, instead of making people more isolated under the guise of "social", "sharing" etc.

<comment><USER6> That transactional view of love is exactly the sort of technomyopia I would expect from the HN crowd.

<comment><USER7> So why are you here? To laugh at people looking for solutions to problems using well-defined means, as opposed to continuing in the usual ambiguous, gut-feeling-driven thinking?

I for one like this kind of "technomyopia", because it works off a framework that lets humans eventually figure things out.

<comment><USER8> I get where you're coming from. Its just that technology is not the right framework to attack all problems. The app OP mentioned is essentially a tool to track trading favors between people - its not anywhere close to "love". In fact the addiction to tech, social media, smartphones etc. is making us spend less real face-face time with people (well-documented), so I would say its precisely the wrong tool to use.

Not saying we should give up, but this is a social problem, better analyzed with more apt tools like social science. Relationships grow with time & investment in interacting with someone else - given that, no amount of "apps" or tech magic can make a fundamental difference.

<comment><USER9> It was probbably a joke, but such an app could be incredibly valuable to those who were perpetually ostracized in their youth and never learned how to interact. Simple things like, "Thank him for this," or, "Tell her she's really good at that," might not even occur to some people who were never exposed to anyone who demonstrated those things.

<comment><USER10> it would certainly be a good cue system for people with mild autism/aspbergers, or social difficulties.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Worth noting -- two of the startups mentioned in this article, Homejoy and Washio, are closed.

Also, services that delivery groceries, cooked meals, or laundry/drycleaning are not new -- they were just given a facelift for a different consumer base. An article like this failing to mention that is a pretty big oversight imho -- it even trends into "back in my day..." territory.

If anything, this new economy is correcting for the car-dependent "convenience economy" that was implemented over the past 30 years or so. The milkman was replaced by milk in every corner store. Diners and luncheonettes were replaced by take out and carry away. Catalogs were replaced by "big box" stores.

It reminds me of the comparison of "head stuck in a newspaper" to "head stuck to a smartphone." Some people try and argue the latter is more egregious, but why?

</comment><comment><USER12> I started reading this and experienced deja vu. After a few minutes, I realized I read and thought heavily about this before.

Previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9265817](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9265817)

</comment><comment><USER13> I never considered myself either a social butterfly or an outdoors person in any capacity beyond an occasional bike ride, but compared to a lot of SF dwellers, apparently I am. I cannot imagine paying such exorbitant sums to live in a tiny ass apartment and have all my worldly needs delivered to my door so I can sit and do whatever until the next time I _had_ to leave my house.

This existence sounds awful and I don't know how people not only manage to do it, but aspire to it.

<comment><USER7> > _This existence sounds awful and I don 't know how people not only manage to > do it, but aspire to it._

Grass looks greener on the other side, I guess. I definitely wouldn't be fine spending shit ton of money for small apartments, but that's unrelated to being "shut in", which is something I find more and more appealing. I guess between spending most of my days in an open-office workplace and an active relationship, I'm just getting tired of _other people_. I find myself dreaming more and more often about a week away from human interruptions. Just me, pen, a notebook, stack of books and a laptop with good Internet connection. I have a lot of thoughts to sort through that I can't because there are other people around me, and I can't focus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The article was mostly about the class lines being draw between the providers and receivers of these services. I agree that this is very important (especially politically) right at this very moment but I think it misses the long view. Eventually this stuff will be done by automation.

If this trend continues unabated, a large part of the population is likely to go full Wall-E, especially as the tech moves the services down-market. That seems like a far more interesting conundrum than a few rich and privileged folks trying to bring back Victorian era house-help with their mobile phones.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is a subject worth talking about, but the article is a bit all over the place.

I'm not going to be easily convinced that chores are a blessed thing. I do think chores will eventually die out because their value is fairly low: they're mostly repetitive tasks that don't require much skill. Ask women from the time before the vacuum cleaner and the washing machine how they feel about the awesomeness of chores.

If you want to know why something happens, look at incentives. Real ones, not the ones that you think should be true. Too often people have an ideal person in their head, and they assume all must act and think that way, so anyone who disagrees cannot really voice their opinion. Then a new solution comes out and a bunch of people rush to it. Or a new president. That demand was always there, it just was not allowed to be heard. If you don't want to hear it, it will catch you off guard.

People work a lot. People are protective of their time. People don't want to socialize. People are forced to earn income through part time jobs. People don't like those other people over there. In my experience, rarely does anyone really care to know why, they just announce a judgment to make themselves feel better and move on.

I don't think this Shut-In Economy development _drives_ inequality. Rather, it's a consequence of it, and one of the examples of why inequality is bad, no matter how "objectively" well the less well off are doing. For the shut-in class, and for the serving class... and for those below.

In a more fair society, elimination of chores would be driven by either shared work or automation, and it will benefit all, so we wouldn't be complaining about it and calling the beneficiaries entitled. But it would take a fundamental rejection of this style of economic affairs to get there.

</comment><comment><USER16> While the article certainly does highlight some disturbing trends, it reads like a hit piece against Silicon Valley. It focuses on a very narrow slice of the population that uses these apps.

It appears she didn't visit a co-working facility or even a coffeeshop as research. That would go against her narrative of the anti-social, nerdy shut- in. She also neglects to talk about the costs of commuting, namely that the longer the drive one has, the more likely they are to have higher levels of obesity, cholesterol, pain, fatigue and anxiety. For those with mid to low incomes, commutes can eat up 9% of one's income. They are also adding to gridlock and pollution.

The article only looks at a small cross-section of what appears to be anti She declines to write about the benefits of being a remote worker. The digital nomad movement is the diametric opposite of a shut-in. Parents of newborn children who work remote now get to be around their children instead of shuttling them off to daycare. These services sound awesome. I don't like doing dishes, washing my clothes, or cleaning my apartment. I don't see any virtue in doing mindless labor that I personally find annoying at best. If I want to do something repetitive that doesn't require higher cognitive abilities, I exercise. It has the benefit of clearing my head/bringing mindfulness. Isn't that the point of technology?

I, personally, have cut down drastically on driving. I am no longer adding to gridlock or spewing pollution into the air. I'm much healthier since I cook for myself more often and I exercise more. I love the flexibility it gives my life. I don't have to take a vacation day for mundane errands like going to the doctor, going to court, picking up a friend or relative from the airport, etc. I've more hobbies and explored more interests in one year of remote work than I did the previous 10 years. The greatest benefit is that it makes me MORE social. I get to see the people who are important to me in life the most and not spend most of my social time with people who I' am lukewarm about. I just didn't have any energy or motivation to do anything but veg out in front of the TV when I drove home through LA traffic from work.

The one downside I was that I found myself consuming more cable news/infotainment. This raised my level of righteous indignation and more and more of my conversations started to become intense debates with my positions formed by emotional responses. However, I fixed this by not watching as much Bloomberg and avoided media intended to cause outrage.

As a number of these services will be automated in the future, her conclusion that we are headed towards a stratified society with on-demand workers being reduced to servants in the Guilted Era is just flat out wrong. I am fearful of the future stratification of society, but that's due to people being displaced from work and not the issues

</comment><comment><USER10> so in summary, a place noted for a high concentration of tech-oriented introverts is full of people who like to be by themselves?</comment>


Cloudflare hit by leap second "software panic" snafu on New Year's Day - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.co.uk/security/2017/01/cloudflare-leap-second-software-panic-snafu-new-years-day/ <comment><USER2> Is there a detailed post mortem available?

<comment><USER3> [https://blog.cloudflare.com/how-and-why-the-leap-second- affe...](https://blog.cloudflare.com/how-and-why-the-leap-second-affected- cloudflare-dns/)</comment></comment>


Why daily news (and Twitter/Facebook) is a bad idea [2010] - <AUTHOR> http://sdegutis.com/blog/2010-02-27-why-daily-news-and-twitter-facebook-is-a-bad-idea/ <comment><AUTHOR> What I didn't realize when I wrote this is that _fear sells_ , and how intertwined that is with our economy of wanting things for free, allowing ourselves to become the product instead of paying money, and having the media control how we feel so they can sell us anti-depressants or whatever fad diet plan or a shiny new car so we don't feel like we're in an infinite loop going nowhere (which they can make us feel via selective news), or really anything. I feel like recent events in recent years have helped me to see there's a bigger picture behind this and that it's more _intentional_ than I thought before. I was stupidly optimistic and thought it was purely because of our demand, not realizing how much forced artificial supply has to do with it.</comment>


Show HN: Varmail.me – A tiny, free API for emailing yourself - <AUTHOR> https://varmail.me <comment><AUTHOR> In case anyone is curious, the code for this is on github: [https://github.com/tdeck/varmail](https://github.com/tdeck/varmail)

</comment><comment><USER2> Sounds cool, I've wanted an easy way to get webhook-to-mail for services etc for a while! (without using a transactional mail provider that might be used for spamming if something goes wrong)

It would be nice to have the documentation available without a signup though. I fed it a mailinator-address, but that's just unnecessary work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for trying it out! You're right, I need to have more on the front page. I just added a quick explanation, but I'll have to work on my copywriting skills. In retrospect, it seems a bit shady to make people type their email in to see what this is, but all I'll ever use your emails for is 1) to send login/activation emails and 2) to send things you POSTed to your endpoints.

I built this out of frustration with those little edge cases where you want an app or script to be able to notify you by email, but don't want to leave your Gmail username/password lying around (often necessary with SMTP) or bother signing up and verifying a domain with one of the general-purpose transactional email services. I'm already finding lots of little uses for this.

<comment><USER2> thanks for moving the example!

This combines very well with [https://hook.io/](https://hook.io/), maybe you could get them to put a reference to your project in the docs for people who want e-mail notifications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very clever. I've used `echo 'foobar' | mail firstname.lastname@example.com` before, but this sounds nice too. Are there particular advantages you'd highlight with this method over that?</comment>


Wanna faster video startup time? URL.createObjectURL to the rescue - <AUTHOR> https://leandromoreira.com.br/2018/08/10/wanna-faster-video-startup-time-url-createobjecturl-to-the-rescue/ <comment><USER2> HTTP/2 server push would seem like a better solution here.

That way you don't have to base64 encode the content (bloated and more cpu to decode), and don't blow out gzip compression dictionaries.

</comment><comment><USER3> The segment using Uint8Array is nice this same object is used to load some files on the browser itself.

</comment><comment><USER4> wanna

<comment><USER5> Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?</comment></comment>


Show HN: my first iOS App as a side project - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/onpage-seo/id854357492?l=de&ls=1&mt=8 relevant way.
I've started it as a side project to support the education my two little kids. Learning Objective-C was tough but there are a lot of good tutorials on the web and iTunes U. Hopefully my app will be useful for You. <comment><AUTHOR> Over the last 9 months I've studied iOS development and this is the result: an app which analyzes websites in their technical - most SEO relevant way. I've started it as a side project to support the education my two little kids. Learning Objective-C was tough but there are a lot of good tutorials on the web and iTunes U. Hopefully my app will be useful for You.</comment>


Type Profiling and Code Coverage Profiling for JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://www.webkit.org/blog/3846/

<comment><USER2> pretty cool! as a mostly chrome user, i'd love to see this land in chrome devtools.

<comment><USER3> We're excited by the code coverage profiler. Would probably help a lot with promises and async stuff. Not yet sure about the type annotations... give it a whirl in Safari and holler my way if its being awesome.

<comment><USER4> If only Safari were multi-platform :-(

<comment><USER5> It supports both platforms, iOS and Mac OS X!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Anonymous User Pattern - <AUTHOR> http://roshfu.com/2012/01/16/the-anonymous-user-pattern.html

<comment><USER2> I tried this with BCC. It ended up being a _colossal_ support expense to have guest accounts available as an option, and didn't lead to meaningful revenue. (Literally less than $100 in about 6 months.) I had every possible variation of "I used it at home and now I am using it at school and the evil computer lost all of my work!!1 FIX IT NOW!", despite telling people multiple times that exactly that would happen if they didn't put in an email address.

It is entirely possible that my implementation sucked or my customers are just uniquely ... inexperienced with dealing with novel usage paradigms, but test the heck out of this.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why not just create a User model that has a null username and password field? If they sign up, you fill in those attributes. No need for a second table!

<comment><USER4> This is the first question that came to my mind too. And it feels like a more accurate model of reality, since an anonymous user _is_ a user, just without a username/password.

You could model this in other ways on the User model too, like having a registered_at column, which, when blank, means an unregistered user. (In case, for example, you wanted to autogenerate a username for anonymous users, for display purposes.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seems with this approach it should be easy for an admin to 'su' to a normal user account and perform actions as that user. Nice for tech support and other administrative operations.

<comment><AUTHOR> wow that's a great idea, I hadn't thought of that! I guess that's just another benefit of dissociating the identity (Identity) from the login (User).

<comment><USER5> This is typically why you separate authentication and authorization. In your case many authenticated users can be authorized to access a single identity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We tried this for a healthcare Q&A site we built (under the assumption that anonymity was paramount).

We blocked spam bots the best we could, but still had issues with actual human spammers and a general lack of quality of submitted posts.

Pros: Questions submitted increased by almost 3x's Cons: Quality of questions / answers decreased considerably. Threatened the integrity of our overal experience so we removed it.

</comment><comment><USER7> I do this with my site, <http://www.manabi.org> to let users try reviewing Japanese flashcards before signing up. They can do everything a normal user can except for share their potentially spammy content with other users.

<comment><USER7> (I'd love to get input on my way of doing it, btw - lazy signup has some unsolved UX challenges, I think)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how you prevent bots from creating millions of fake users. I guess by looking at the headers for their user agent and have a blacklist of known bots?

<comment><AUTHOR> it's the same problem as allowing users to create millions of identities. if it gets to be a problem, you can just start removing unclaimed identities from oldest to newest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great article, but that text shadow is horribly distracting. I'm a fan on header text, but not so much on main content.

</comment><comment><USER10> I wonder what benefits localStorage would have over cookie based sessions in enabling anonymous usage over longer periods of time. Are user behaviors for clearing localstorage different from cookies?

Seems like an interesting thing to test on my new project.

<comment><USER11> Tangentially, but you might also be interested in evercookie (<http://samy.pl/evercookie/>) which exploits the fact that browsers have made clearing cookies, localStorage, and a few other things into separate tasks, so the probability of users correctly clearing everything is low.

(caution: dark side points)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I use something like this on FivePad[1]. Users get a "profile" record right away that gets attached to a "user" record as soon as they register.

[1]: <https://www.fivepad.me>

</comment><comment><USER13> We use the same approach on Feedity - <http://feedity.com> and offer users 'signup & save' option at the end of the flow.

</comment><comment><USER14> it would be interesting to know how this affects the bottom-line across businesses. e.g. IMO, this will not work in the games industry. Anyone has any experience implementing this to share?</comment>


Method Chaining - <AUTHOR> http://martinfowler.com/dslwip/MethodChaining.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Is this kind of humor allowed?

<comment><USER2> This is humour?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it is. To paraphrase a certain famous man,

" Some people, when confronted with a problem, think 'I know, I'll use Method Chaining.' Now they have many more problems."

If you read the article, you'll see those problem mount and mount and the proposed solutions are more and more hideous. Thus humor. Akin to this really: [http://www.ariel.com.au/jokes/The_Evolution_of_a_Programmer....](http://www.ariel.com.au/jokes/The_Evolution_of_a_Programmer.html)</comment></comment></comment>


Project Stargate: An "Always On" Skype Video connection - <AUTHOR> http://go.danielodio.com/stargate

<comment><AUTHOR> BTW if anyone has any tips on how to do this "always on" video concept, I'd love to hear them!</comment>


John von Neumann - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann

<comment><USER2> I knew him at first for the minimax theorem in game theory, then I've read he was part of club of Hungarian scientists called "the Martians" and also Fermi jokingly said the extraterrestrial life is already here and they call themselves the Hungarians. I loled and moved to the next theorem..minimax is meh.

</comment><comment><USER3> What's the context for why this is linked? I doubt JvN is new to many here..?

<comment><USER4> Probably not, but it provides a chance for us to discuss his many accomplishments. A true genius. My personal favorite mathematician, Turing is a close second. The ranking might be flipped depending on my mood in a given time period.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which stack will get my MVP API off the ground fastest? - <AUTHOR> I have an idea for a service as a side business and need some kind of E-commerce API for it. The main feature is it's going to produce one-off artifacts and none of the off-the-shelf solutions I've looked at really fit.
Basically I need a way to stand up an API with an /price/ endpoint and a /orders/ endpoint that run a bit of logic, put stuff in a database and trigger the payment processor flow. Easy-peasy except I have analysis paralysis over what to build it with and where to host it.
I'm comfortable with "classic" .net and dabbled in Node.js. I'd love to build it as an .Net Web API but the prospect of cloud hosting scares me (plus azure is freakin pricy). <comment><USER2> I'm biased but I'd go with .NET if you actually want to get the thing built. Obviously use a new stack if you want to use it as a learning experience.

With .NET Core and Postgres you can get something stood up within a few days and host on a cheap Linode, Digital Ocean or another provider's box for $6 a month or so. That should last you scalability wise until you have enough money from it to do something else and gives you type safe, performant code.

<comment><AUTHOR> This was my main plan, is hosting .Net Core easy to do on a bare-bones image like DO or Linode? Or is it worth to pony up for a Azure App instance?

<comment><USER2> It was a while ago now (I can't remember the last time I ssh-ed into the box) but I set up my blog using this guide [0].

I just logged into Digital Ocean to check, I'm running a single 512 MB memory droplet with a 20GB disk for $6 a month and apart from getting familiar with Linux (especially managing user permissions correctly), setup was easy, I run an Nginx reverse proxy in front of a Kestrel instance but I know people have said you don't even need Nginx.

I also used Let's Encrypt for a free SSL certificate and setting that up to correctly refresh on a CRON job was the hardest part of the whole thing.

I've no doubt the site [1] would fall over if it ever got anything like the HN hug of death but this would be easy to plan for assuming organic growth, I imagine there are fairly easy ways to set up load balancing for droplets on DO and moving the database onto a separate droplet etc should give you enough headroom for scaling.

The code [2] is way outdated now and awful quality but it's on GitHub.

Others who have more experience may say it's worth learning a certain cloud feature or serverless stuff but my gut feeling is it's better to get the thing out there and worry about that sort of stuff when you get there.

Edit: It's worth mentioning that [0] talks about developing the site on Linux, though I did that just to get a feel for Linux it's not at all necessary and much easier to do the development on Windows with Visual Studio then all you need to do is:

      dotnet publish -c Release -r linux-x64

To get a published site to run on the Linux droplet/machine.

[0]: [https://www.hanselman.com/blog/PublishingAnASPNETCoreWebsite...](https://www.hanselman.com/blog/PublishingAnASPNETCoreWebsiteToACheapLinuxVMHost.aspx)

[1]: [https://eliot-jones.com/](https://eliot-jones.com/)

[2]: [https://github.com/EliotJones/LightBlog](https://github.com/EliotJones/LightBlog)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Whichever you know best

<comment><USER4> This is the only correct answer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Personally I would choose ASP.Net Core, hosted on a Microsoft Azure App Service with continuous integration from AppVeyor.

Benefits \- Azure App Service free tier is awesome. AppVeyor have a 14 day trial that supports deployment directly from Git to Azure and .Net Core is awesome.

Here's a blog I wrote recently which covers this exact implementation -

[https://www.simongilbert.net/xunit-ci-azure-appveyor- aspdotn...](https://www.simongilbert.net/xunit-ci-azure-appveyor- aspdotnetmvccore/)

In terms of a database implementation, Azure's NoSQL table storage is super cheap and awesome, as covered here -

[https://www.simongilbert.net/dependency-injection-aspnet- mvc...](https://www.simongilbert.net/dependency-injection-aspnet-mvc-azure- storage-autofac/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Can't really go wrong with python + Django (or flask if you want to stay minimal). Sounds like you'll need auth, so Django should support that out of the box.

Both will integrate easily with Postgres, and for flask, take a look at the peewee ORM.

<comment><AUTHOR> What's the easiest/best way to host python+flask?

<comment><USER6> Easiest? Probably heroku after you get past the initial boilerplate - but can quickly become expensive.

Most cost efficient would be to Spin up a cheap droplet in digital ocean, install docker-compose with a Postgres service and python image. In the python image, just boot up a Django server on port 80. If you need https, youll need to add something in front of Django, like nginx to handle ssl termination.

App engine could also be a very quick and cheap way - you get ssl, and domain for free, but you do need to buy into their way of doing things, which has a bit of a learning curve .

<comment><USER7> I'd use Gunicorn instead of Django dev server.

<comment><USER6> Yes, definitely for production use. Getting started though the dev server is fine for testing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Usually, I cannot finish what I have started because of debating over which shiny new framework/stack I need to use. I overoptimize things and always try to code for worst case. I cannot resist to think about hundreds of users, peak performance, hn traffic of death etc. Eventually it never finishes or I loose interest.

Best thing you can do is to make something that just works in fastest way possible. Anything that can print out text will work. You will always have a chance to make it better once it starts to get some traction.

</comment><comment> ng-user Stop wasting time debating and just use .NET, don't overthink things.

<comment><USER9> So many side projects I could have simply _done_ over the years if I wasn't trying to figure out which LAMP/Rails/etc framework would get me there fastest... despite my not knowing PHP/Ruby/Python/etc

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Whatever you feel most comfortable with.

As for .NET hosting prices, I don't understand why you need complex hosting. A smallish instance paired with SQL Server RDS (both of which can be hosted on Linux or Windows) should suffice.

Keep in mind that both AWS and Azure offer a free tier when you're starting up:

[https://azure.microsoft.com/en- us/overview/startups/](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/overview/startups/)

[https://aws.amazon.com/free](https://aws.amazon.com/free)

</comment><comment><USER11> Whatever you know best.

"But deployment" deployment is cheap.

"But hosting" hardware is cheap.

"But time" time is _not_ cheap.

You don't need to screw around and learn another language/framework/ecosystem to get an MVP off the ground. You need to be able to hit the ground running and never let off the gas. This means you need to be able to change/adapt/feature what you need to. That takes brain cells. So does learning another language/framework/ecosystem. Don't make it harder than it needs to be.

</comment><comment><USER12> .NET Core Web API is absolutely perfect for this and the fact you already have some .NET experience makes it a no brainer in my opinion.

Just get started knocking out a prototype running locally and break the analysis paralysis, you'll have no end of hosting options to choose from later. You'll be amazed what a 5 dollar a month Ubuntu server from Digital Ocean or similar will handle running .NET Core. Azure is obviously an option too but don't rule out AWS.

</comment><comment><USER13> PostgreSQL with PostgREST might be enough for your needs if you're mostly reading/writing to the DB. Can run on your own server, cloud, Heroku, etc.

</comment><comment><USER14> Check this out: [https://www.notion.so/gug/Todo- cafe7661e92b4fc1aebb7bcb3c103...](https://www.notion.so/gug/Todo- cafe7661e92b4fc1aebb7bcb3c103080) I think node.js and Flutter can get you your MVP in one week assuming you can clearly articulate your idea.

</comment><comment><USER15> found this to convert json to sql creates:

[http://pojo.sodhanalibrary.com/ConvertJsonToSQL](http://pojo.sodhanalibrary.com/ConvertJsonToSQL)

and your selects, updates etc

[http://convertjson.com/json-to-sql.htm](http://convertjson.com/json-to- sql.htm)

</comment><comment><USER16> Plenty of cheap asp.net hosts, so don't worry about cost. You don't need to use Azure.

</comment><comment><USER17> There is no framework that can match the feature set and the development speed of RoR.

If you are not familiar with ruby, go with a language you are familiar with. There is a clone in every major language. It's just that RoR is the "original".

</comment><comment><USER18> This is kind've a bait question. I mean the "no duh" answer (as others have already mentioned) is "whichever you are most comfortable with". I'm confused as to what other answer you could want

</comment><comment><USER15> I would start with a data model then you can use this if you want to convert to c#: [http://json2csharp.com/](http://json2csharp.com/)

</comment><comment><USER19> For a MVP and to validate your business idea you could put something together with webhooks/ifttt.com/zapier.com/googleSheets.

</comment><comment><USER20> node</comment>


Announcing MongoDB 3.4 - <AUTHOR> https://www.mongodb.com/blog/post/announcing-mongodb-3-4 <comment><USER2> > We've also extended the platforms that MongoDB runs on, including ARM-64, > and IBM's POWER8 and zSeries platforms.

I would love to meet the people running MongoDB on zSeries.

That's got to be a special combination of " _We need this because I heard it 's web-scale!_" and " _Management said we have to put this on the Z!_ ".</comment>


Venmo is discontinuing web support for payments and more - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/15/venmo-is-discontinuing-web-support-for-payments-and-more/ <comment><USER2> I guess I'm the only one that uses venmo.com, too bad, it was nice being able to use venmo from my laptop.</comment>


New Munin plugin repository website - <AUTHOR> http://exchange.munin-monitoring.org/

<comment><USER2> I love munin. It makes monitoring our servers so simple, and it's really easy to make plugins as well. It's neat being able to take your usual tools and give them a "memory"</comment>