Show HN: Easel, web design in the browser - <AUTHOR> https://alpha.easel.io/demo

<comment><USER2> Congratulations! Glad to see more people attempting this type of thing. The demo content design is pretty nice.

Some good things in Easel, but I have lots of problems with all the tiny little controls. Also it's an interesting decision to use a canvas element instead of the DOM. Without solving the overall page layout issue, this is a nice drawing tool like others have mentioned, and kudos to the technical and design effort, but in the end if you're not using the DOM, you're making pictures of web sites...

Therefore, it's my responsibility to let you all know about Edit Room, my project as an independent developer, <http://www.edit-room.com/>

Edit Room is also a 'web design in the browser' app, but it uses the real DOM, not a canvas, so whatever you can build with Edit Room is what is truly able to be built with HTML and CSS. It's only a slight limitation due to the unique way I've handled absolute/relative layouts. Edit Room still gives you incredible design and layout freedom, without floats.

Edit Room doesn't do fixed widths at all. Documents created with Edit Room flex naturally. Everything you layout and design with my app is based on a flexible grid, and it has a built-in width preview, so you can design at any screen width.

Edit Room exports the full HTML and CSS for your entire layout, or you can copy individual elements' CSS, it's adaptable to your workflow.

Edit Room also supports linking Typekit and Fontdeck accounts, so you can use Web Fonts in your exported designs.

You can try out the demo here: <http://www.edit-room.com/screens/13/edit>

Oh, and one more thing: You can animate your layers with visual keyframes and Edit Room generates CSS3 Animations.

<comment><USER3> This is very impressive, nice job! If I can give you one piece of advice though it would be to hire a designer. You need to give people the feeling that they will be able to build a beautiful website with your product and I almost dismissed it by looking at your landing page's design, it was only when I decided to check out the demo that I was convinced.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the feedback! I've gone through several versions of the home screen so far and will try to improve it further.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just a drawing tool in the browser. This doesn't do anything different than Photoshop or Omnigraffle, if the web designer is smart enough to reuse layers / components.

It could be a _really_ useful though if it had support for more than absolute- positioned, fixed-sized elements, and used the browser's layout engine instead.

Today's biggest problem is that web designers use Photoshop for coming up with mockups and then they just _expect_ content to fit on their fixed-sized design, when the web exactly the other around - content is king.

<comment><AUTHOR> The hard part about using the browser's layout engine is that it is limiting to the designer. We'd have to snap things into say, floating position, etc. And we'd have to know exactly what the designer was thinking when they're dragging some element around. Or they would have to know about floats, and how to use them.

We think (right now) that the best way around this is some kind of constraint system, like CAD apps have. We're not sure what that looks like yet, though.

<comment><USER5> I think what you have is great and I think you should run with what people are seeing this as "awesome" for, design prototyping. I think making this into anything that generates layout or uses the browser engine is going to be either: much harder than you think, or: will lose much of the functionality that you can allow for now via "do whatever, drag/drop, absolute positioning".

<comment><USER6> I totally agree. I've been wanting an app like this for the last 6 months (wondering why one didnt already exist), and a lack of fluid layout doesnt put me off at all. The one thing I really want is realtime collaborative use, ala google docs (Firebase should make that easy).

<comment><AUTHOR> You should email me. email@example.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is cool. I like the concept. I'm hoping that someone can create a web app that reduces the need for Photoshop. You guys are off to an auspicious start. Great work!

My only comment is that the UI was confusing for me. After 60 seconds of playing around, here are a few ideas to consider (if you wish):

1) The "inspector" window on the right seemed to change a lot. I know contextual "inspectors" are standard UI practice, but as an Easel noob something about your implementation was confusing to me. (For example, why when I click one of the rounded buttons does the inspector say "Rectangle" and when I click another one it says "Element?")

2) There were a lot of icons that I couldn't understand at first glance. Icons are okay, but too many unfamiliar ones makes me confused. (i.e., What does the "lightning bolt" mean?)

3) At one point I had the menu bar at the top, the tools bar on the left (a la photoshop), the contextual inspector on the right, and another floating window open on the bottom left. It just felt overwhelming having so many controls open. (That was when I instinctually closed the Easel window.) Maybe you could anchor all of the floating inspectors into 1 group on the right, like Photoshop does.

4) The circles for the 2 colors is confusing to me. (What does the number inside of the second circle mean? Why do many other graphics app use 2 squares instead of 2 circles?)

5) Fields in the inspector weren't labeled. For example, when I select the "easel.io" logo at the top of the page, one of the fields in the inspector says "Lobster." As a font nerd I know that must the "font" field, but do you expect every user to know this? Some labels, or icons like Photoshop's font inspector, would help me understand what each field does. (<http://i.imgur.com/CAY88.png>)

Overall the UI just felt overwhelming. There was too much "unfamiliar" stuff and not enough "familiar stuff."

A good article is "Interfaces for Staying in the Flow" by Bederson/UMD HCI. On the first page there's Figure 1 (<http://hcil2.cs.umd.edu/trs/2003-37/2003-37.pdf>), which shows how flow is derived from a balance of skills and challenges revealed over time. My feedback is there were too many challenges in Easel at first. In terms of Figure 1, that would be a low x-axis value and a high y-axis value. This would indicate the UI may create "anxious" users.

If I may, I'd also recommend a little bit of "convention over configuration" for the UI. Although DHH talks about this in re: a codebase, I think the rule applies equally well for the UI. If there's a standard way that apps do something, try and stick with it. For example, canvas size isn't something you usually find directly embedded into a menu.

In short: I would suggest making the "basic features" more "familiar" looking at first; this way, people can get started making sites right away. Then, bury the "detail features" further in the UI so that if you want to do more complex tasks you have to spend more time learning the program. Benderson's article does a great job explaining all of this.

On a totally separate note, "Easel" is an excellent name for this product... and in this business, the name matters a lot.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for such a detailed reply!

As for the circles, we thought they looked better than squares.

We've been getting tons of response on the number in the middle of the circle; it is the stroke width.

The 'inspector' (good name, btw) needs work. It definitely needs better layout and labeling.

Re: challenges. Noted.

Overall, thanks for the feedback. Know that we are integrating this into our todos. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very cool interface. Any a very nice usage of keyboard shortcuts.

Can Easel output an entire web page? - meaning can I layout an entire page then get a zipped download of the page plus any CSS and JavaScript resources?

<comment><AUTHOR> It can. But things will all be absolutely positioned. The intent is to generate pieces of html and css that fit into your dev environment. The code generation is still very much in-flux, but from what we're seeing, programmers dont want the entire thing generated.

<comment><USER8> _but from what we're seeing, programmers dont want the entire thing generated_

Actually for developers like myself there's several use cases where having access to the complete generated source would be awesome:

1\. Separate the positioning/layout styles and the color/font/design styles into separate CSS files. That way I can include all the designs created with Easel easily instead of copy/paste one at a time for each element generated.

2\. For showing a mockup to a client or knocking out quick interface for a side project using absolute positioning can be acceptable.

<comment><USER9> Aye, an export function that generates e.g. less-files much the way bootstrap has organized their imports would be killer for this app. It would make it dead simple to prototype buttons or sections of a page, and easily include them in your build process down the line. Having variables separated would also be a plus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Instantly fell in love with this.

Thank you for not trying to dumb down the UX with an 'easy to use' UI. It's clearly an 'easy to learn' UI and I can't wait to get that invite.

<comment><AUTHOR> email me at firstname.lastname@example.com and I'll speed that invite up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hi, this seems neat. Some points:

In Chrome 19.0.1084.52 on Ubuntu, I'm getting told to use Apple command key shortcuts.

There is no scrollbar. The scroll wheel works, but the site captures the middle mouse button (without using it?), so grab and drag (with the chromeTouch extension) doesn't work.

The little instruction sequences would make a lot more sense if they said what was happening. E.g. instead of "hold shift, click the text", "hold shift and click the text to frob the whatsit".

Grids and columns seem limited and too much work for aligning things. Check out what Inkscape can do.

There seem to be functions that are inaccessible if you don't know their keyboard shortcuts, or perhaps just not working for me, e.g. selecting multiple objects (not shift, control, or alt?!), making a group.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback.

The apple keys are part of the design so sadly wont change.

Shift should work for selecting multiple items, so thats a bug. We admittedly haven't done much testing on other platforms.

Grouping and making elements should definitely be in the right click menu. There are some (probably esoteric) icons on the inspector/property panel for these functions.

We'll look into the chrometouch extension and see how we can make it work with the app. I didnt know it was capturing the middle mouse button. Will fix.

Thanks again for the feedback.

<comment><USER12> What do you mean "part of the design"? Showing keys you know very well many of your users can't type is part of your design?

<comment><USER13> Yes how does that work? Strange statement! I second lucian1900s suggestion.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for the confusion. It's just what mkl said: the apple keys are hardcoded into the demo page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cool :)

Two notes:

      - I'm not on a mac so don't give me mac shortcuts
      - Control+Shift+E is already bound in firefox (and it's a very handy shortcut)

<comment><USER15> Ditto for me as non-Mac user as well. One neat feature might be to detect which operating system you use and display the appropriate shortcuts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Great idea guys! I can already see myself designing something and building a quick real-world prototype and sharing the url of that with clients. So much better than designing/wireframing something, creating a 1000-layer mockup in photoshop, sending over a dozen JPEGS to the client and explaining what's what. As a designer the interface is a nobrainer. I can just step in and get to work. Very easy! Nice to see 960 grids-support as well! I understand there's no liquid-layout support but thats okay. It's not the most important thing. (And I feel you could always add support for that later). One tip: I see the vector-drawing tool and an image import tool. How about vector-import?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. Please email me at email@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's a interesting problem you guys are tackling and your progress is very impressive! I like the UI! And for sure it's good that more people are working to make web design more enjoyable. For some time I was wondering why there are so many new frameworks for coding emerging and way less 'visual frameworks' designers can use. That's why we are building one – focusing on freedom and responsive websites rather than code, something Photoshop can not handle for sure. More at <http://www.froont.com>. Anyhow we are living in very interesting times! Looking forward to see how Easel.io will evolve!

</comment><comment><USER18> I've tried to tackle this very same problem. I've been doing a lot of UX work for a native Mac OS, which would allow you to design similar to PS but use a preview using a Webkit engine.

You can check out the mock I've been working on via my Dribbble site (<http://cl.ly/HOrs>) and the larger version is attached below that shot as well. If anyone is interested we should definitely sync up and tackle this problem.

I think you you have here is off to a good start but is definitely too basic if you are intending it to take over PS. Would be great for simple prototyping sites though.

</comment><comment><USER19> Congrats on putting out a great looking alpha. One question I have: The entire layout is being drawn inside of a canvas. Why was this decision made? Since (at least partly) the purpose of your tool is to output css it seems that you have tasked yourself with recreating CSS rendering inside of a canvas. Seems like a huge and unnecessary burden when just outside of the canvas you have this rendering tool specifically designed to render CSS.

</comment><comment><USER20> You should take a look at Unbounce. While they're targeting landing pages, their page editor does this the right way IMO.

What I'd personally like to see is a JS in-browser page editor that is (a) built on top of Twitter Bootstrap (b) open source and (c) integrate-able with other sites much like rich-text editors are.

I think you could still tack on a paid service to it, but starting with the above would be gold, Jerry, gold!

</comment><comment><USER21> Does "Download as PNG" menu action in File menu work for anyone? That is the only feature I care about, and I haven't seen anything like that before.

<comment><AUTHOR> Which browser? Will look into...

<comment><USER22> Chrome 19 on Win 7 for me.

Also the Element window gets stuck on my cursor when I try to scroll through it.

Really looks great though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :).

Ah, ok. Will fix the stuck issue. That's a nasty one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm a web application nerd and I really think you're onto something here. As an initial offering this app has a lot of promise and I can't wait to see what else you guys do with it in the future. Everyone will be designing (pretty shortly) in their browsers it's only a matter of time with the advent of cloud computing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. We agree with you. It will be so much easier when the tools understand the process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> To be clear- does this generate HTML, or just images that are accurate in terms of what is possible with a browser?

<comment><USER25> apple-shift-e shows an export lightbox with html.

<comment><USER24> Then I'm a little dubious about that- given that everything appears to be absolutely positioned. Reminds me of the Adobe web design tool before they bought Macromedia (anyone remember the name of it?)

As a mock-up tool, it's great.

<comment><AUTHOR> re: absolutely positioning, definitely not ideal. We're toying around with different code generation techniques. We feel at this point, that generating layout html isn't really a good idea. So we're focusing on getting the colors, shadows, text, etc out out the tool.

We'd love to know what you might need as far as code generation.

<comment><USER26> This is not an easy problem (and I think nailing the parts you're focusing on first is a good decision) but if you guys could get the code generation part of the overall page layout problem solved, you'd really have something unique.

I think by far the most time consuming (and frustrating) part of "easy" web design, at least for me, is getting the floats, clears, block vs inline, etc. stuff working perfectly without resorting to absolute positioning or other shortcuts.

If I could quickly throw together a page layout - navbar on top, image on left on main box, text lined up on right, etc. define a few properties (fluid vs fixed width), this element centered, that element indented, etc. and quickly get a working page layout system in place, that could save people hours. I'd pay for that in a heartbeat.

Like I said, I know this isn't an easy problem to solve and I like the idea of getting the per-element / style code generation done first, but do keep this in the back of your minds. Keep it up!

<comment><USER17> floats, block vs inline and adaptive layouts.. for sure it is not easy but we are working to solve that in <http://www.froont.com>.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I was a a bit bummed when I realised that slick scrolling is canvas. It feels outstanding on my mac trackpad. It's a very 'appy' web-app, if that makes sense.

It wasn't until I read the comments here that I realised that this doesn't actually export html/css. It's still a downright slick mockup tool.

<comment><AUTHOR> It does export pieces of the design in html/css.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This strikes me as a good mix of Balsalmiq (www.balsalmiq.com) and Photoshop.

One of my pet peeves is getting mockups from designers that clearly fail to take the actual abilities of browsers into account. Hopefully, this can change that, while still giving them the design freedom they want!

<comment><USER29> Then you need to get a designer that knows how the web works! It shocks me when I see fellow designers make things that's not feasible on the web.

<comment><USER30> On the other hand, a designer that has no knowledge of HTML or CSS can open doors that you may have never considered, even if it involves more work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The "Make me pretty" section doesn't render properly for me under Firefox 13.0 on Arch Linux, but it looks right in Chromium. Here's what it looks like in Firefox:

<http://oi46.tinypic.com/29ptdtk.jpg>

<comment><AUTHOR> Ooh, Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Personally I don't see how this would save me time, I would rather just design in html/css.

</comment><comment><USER33> My favorite part is the HTML/CSS snippet generation. Many times I've had to play around with the CSS in Chrome inspector to get what I wanted. While it's not hard, I do like to be able to mock something up like this and then get the css.

</comment><comment><USER34> A minor bug: if you change a value in a text field (such as the Y offset for a drop shadow) and click the OK button, the value is not saved. You need to first make the focus go out of the text field and then click the OK button.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Cool. One of the things that confuses me though are the hotkeys (control+shift+5 turns the div into a button? not very intuitive). Instead of hotkeys, I'd prefer to be told how to do it normally (in some intuitive way).

<comment><USER36> Do you use Photoshop? It's analogous to the hotkeys there.

<comment><USER35> Yes but Photoshop has the tools and buttons to accomplish the same thing. Generally you learn those first, and the hotkeys second. Jumping directly to the hotkeys, especially without any sort of hotkey chart, I find off-putting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Noted. We'll work on making this more clear and maybe direct people to click rather than use the hotkeys.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Thanks to some quick turnaround from the Easel guys, just added it to the Backbone.js homepage here:

<http://backbonejs.org/#examples-easel>

</comment><comment><USER38> I had a funny satisfaying feeling to have a free Illustrator Licence for a minute.

That said I agree that, as cool and well delivered, it's against the fluid/responsive web we're in.

</comment><comment><USER39> For standard webpage elements, this would work great. But for more customized styles, you'll still be using Photoshop or pen-paper and then jump onto this.

</comment><comment><USER40> Looks like this webpage is drawn in Canvas. Can this tool translate the entire Canvas content to a HTML doc that I can then publish?

</comment><comment><USER41> Nice Ben, great to see this app continuing to get better. I'm really digging the Elements Dialog, would love to see that expand.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I have some plans on how that will fit into your workflow with the rest of the guys. Will email soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'm sorry, my Firefox said that the script was unresponsive, I clicked 'Continue,' and everything remained sort of frozen.

</comment><comment><USER43> Looks nice, is it or will it be open source?

<comment><USER44> We aren't currently planning on making it open source.

<comment><USER45> Props to you for that man, especially since considering how smooth this demo was working I'm pretty sure you wouldn't have problems selling it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I'll stick with Photoshop and Sublime Text 2. Thanks though, it was fun to play around with for a while.

</comment><comment><USER47> Nice Ben! Good luck with everything. We will be testing it in the future and will give you feedback :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yay. Thanks Max. Can't wait to have you guys in it more :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> How is this useful? I can edit colors, border radius, box shadow, line height, font, positioning, and alignment in real time on a real HTML mockup using Firebug, webkit developer tools, even the Internet Explorer F12 tools.

Web design mockups that include these things should be done in HTML and CSS. WYSIWYG editors are crippling for professionals and poison for amateurs.

</comment><comment><USER49> It's impossible to use in Chrome 19 on Win 7 because the scrollbars are missing.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can use the hand tool to pan around. You can press the space bar to enable it. Then just drag the canvas around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I'm more interested in the infinite canvas feel. How did they do that?

<comment><USER51> If you're interested in a library for that effect, there's this: <http://ianli.com/infinitedrag/> I've been using it to make an infinite-canvas notetaking app and it works quite well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Looks a lot like getmarquee.com, only not as impressive.

<comment><AUTHOR> Marquee is _really_ cool. But they are aimed at a different audience: non technical users. Our goal is to help streamline the design -> development process. The people making apps need a lot more flexibility than marquee provides.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> There's no way this won't kill Photoshop for web design

<comment><USER53> Maybe for you, not for people who create real designs that aren't just css buttons, gradients and rounded borders.

<comment><AUTHOR> Many designers definitely need more than the tool currently provides. I'm curious, what would it need for you to use easel?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Very cool. Is there "snap to grid" functionality?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, there is a snappable, customizable grid. Under the grid menu, you can show the grid and grid system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Wow.

Just, wow.

</comment><comment><USER56> very nice and fast - definitely by leaps and bounds more intuitive than the old dreamweaver I was using some 10 years ago!

</comment><comment><USER57> jinkers.. one of the best webapps iv'e seen

</comment><comment><USER58> Very nice. What's next for Easel?

</comment><comment><USER59> This is AWESOME!

<comment><USER60> +1. Incredible job Ben. Incredible job.</comment></comment>


Apple's Gorgeous iOS 6 Product Page. - <AUTHOR> http://ryanspoon.com/blog/2012/06/12/apples-gorgeous-ios-6-product-page/

<comment><USER2> Hmm, like the layout, presents a lot of info well, but really not a fan of the font they've used for that top section. It's just on the edge of being hard to read, not quite, but not clear. And the main headers with the gradient effect just look a bit blurry to me.</comment>


Show HN: Markdown New Tab – A new tab replacement to jot down notes in Markdown - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/plibither8/markdown-new-tab <comment><USER2> > _The code makes use of localStorage() to save the raw text and the time and > date of when the edit has been made._

Given that localStorage only has 5MiB available to it, you could try using the localForage library to have a localStorage-like API around IndexedDB, so that people can store even larger notes (you could even support storing pasted images as PNG blobs). Even better: is has automatic localForage fallback.

Alternatively, you might want to either compress the text with LZ-String before storing it[1]. (BTW, version 2.0 is currently in the works and much faster, especially if you use the _" Unsafe"_ version[2])

[0] [https://localforage.github.io/localForage/](https://localforage.github.io/localForage/)

[1] [http://pieroxy.net/blog/pages/lz- string/index.html](http://pieroxy.net/blog/pages/lz-string/index.html)

[2] [https://github.com/pieroxy/lz- string/pull/98#issuecomment-40...](https://github.com/pieroxy/lz- string/pull/98#issuecomment-404166788)

<comment><USER3> You realize that all of Pride and Prejudice is ~280KB, right?

[http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1342](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1342)

:)

<comment><USER4> Even so, I often store images within my online notes. Linking out to them is one option, but of course means that my notes would be dependent upon a third party host. Being able to paste image blobs into the document and store them with the text would be an advantage if I were to want to use this.

<comment><USER5> I don't think you can paste images into a Markdown editor.

<comment><USER6> Most Markdown parsers will accept a data:uri blob, as they allow inline HTML.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Personally, I bookmarked this piece of code, so that everytime I open a new tab and want to take notes, I just open one and press my bookmark link:

        data:text/html,

Alternatively, you could also paste this in your browser URL bar and press enter.

I got this code from some GitHub gist, but it has served me well for many years.

<comment><USER2> This works great! I can combine it with Firefox' often-forgotten _" Keyword"_ feature of bookmarks so that typing _note_ in the URL bar automatically opens this. And to save a note I just press CTRL+S

Microscopic tweak: white font on black background

        data:text/html,

EDIT: Another tweak: give the body focus automatically

        data:text/html,

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just use the papier chrome extension. Same exact thing except it actually displays styles and is easier to install.

[https://getpapier.com/](https://getpapier.com/)

<comment><USER2> Not open source though, as far as I can tell. Also, and I know this is stupid, but any website this fancy for a simple extension makes me a bit suspicious.

<comment><USER9> That's fine to be skeptical but they are a design and consulting firm. Makes sense that they could bang something nice out and if it's popular the link back will help their seo and perhaps directly get them business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Serious question: does anyone regularly use a Markdown notes app/site/extension?

I've seen this kind of thing appear a few times a year and, while they are cool and I like Markdown, I find I stop using them rather quickly in favor of things like the macOS Notes app or Slack because of things like convenience, ease of sharing, better search, more ease of mind that my notes won't one day disappear because of a side effect of clearing history or because the developer didn't understand browser storage API quirks. For example, I used Dillinger.io until the interface was updated and my notes were gone. I seem to remember another one that interacted with gist.github.com until one day it didn't. Hurray.

I think a company around a Markdown based app or extension would be good because other solutions don't embrace Markdown, and the ones that do might be a flash in the pan.

<comment><USER11> I recently started taking notes in markdown. I previously had notes scattered across txt files, Word docs, ColorNote, and emails to myself.

I take journal-type notes about personal things, and I demand that I have them available conveniently decades from now. I strongly prefer a dark theme. I was going to jump ship entirely to OneNote, but I can't get a dark theme on Desktop and mobile.

Moving to markdown has tremendous benefits. You have proper separation of concerns- "how do I edit on X platform" vs "how do I store my notes".

For storage, I've considered a git repo, but I'm using Dropbox for now. It has 30 day history, so I can correct for any mistake I'd care about.

For editing, I pick an editor on my current platform. Atom on Desktop. IA writer on Android.

I don't currently have great search, but I think I can do that with Dropbox. I'm more concern about future-proofing and dark theme.

<comment><USER12> Sounds like you might be a candidate for ConnectedText [0]

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is really cool and I'll use it. My only negative comment is that white on black is really harsh on my eyes. It would be nice if the theme could be toned down a bit somehow.

<comment><USER14> I much prefer it to a lower contrast setup. And it does mimic a terminal.

I do wonder if it's controlled by the current chrome theme, given that the tab recorded in the window is also dark.

<comment><USER15> To be fair, most terminals I've encountered aren't _white_ on black, but more of a light grey on black. I believe that's what OP means by toning it down a bit. While I do prefer a higher contrast as you do, I agree with OP in that this is too high.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Reminds me on "Mindful Chrome Extension", which I've been using a lot

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mindful- beta/cieek...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mindful- beta/cieekmjjdkckhpidgaffphlaljdfhhab)

</comment><comment><USER17> I _love this_ , and I wish I could use it, but I've moved to Firefox. You'd have an instant daily user right here if you released it in Firefox.

<comment><USER18> I just tried and appears to work OK (Firefox 61.0.1, macOS)... since it's unsigned I loaded it as a temporary add-on in about:debugging

plibither8, would you mind adding instructions to load this into Firefox in your README as well as Chrome? Also please upload to addons.mozilla.org as well as the Chrome Store.

Nice work!

<comment><USER18> In case anyone is curious why this works, Firefox switched to a new extensions API which tries to stay compatible with the one Chrome uses:

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add- ons/WebExtensions](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why would you use markdown to take notes? Markdown is designed to be displayed as rich-text (headings, lists, etc) after authoring. If you only ever view it in plaintext as an editor, what's the point?

<comment><USER20> I take notes in Markdown in an editor that formats it automagically called IA Writer. Bullets are indented, headlines bolded and out-dented, etc.

<comment><USER21> Also:

[https://caret.io/](https://caret.io/) [https://typora.io/](https://typora.io/)

<comment><USER22> Also the venerable [https://stackedit.io/](https://stackedit.io/). Also the new GitBook [https://docs.gitbook.com/v2-changes/feature- highlights#unifi...](https://docs.gitbook.com/v2-changes/feature- highlights#unified-experience-between-reading-and-editing)

I'm sure there are a few more markdown "WYSIWYM" I'm forgetting...

To build your own see also [https://simplemde.com/](https://simplemde.com/). Basically CodeMirror is friendly to mixed-font syntax highlighting.

Also yours truly [https://mathdown.net](https://mathdown.net)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm a big Moo.do[0] fan - I use it for notes, my todo list, and agenda, so at the moment I've got it set up as my new tab with some custom CSS to hide the stuff I don't need to see in that context.

This seems to distill the concept down very nicely - quicker to load and straight to the point. Sadly I'd miss the structure of Moo.do but I can definitely see a world in which I'd use it - nice work.

[0] [https://www.moo.do](https://www.moo.do)

</comment><comment><USER24> Dear HN - you might be interested in Write.Pub ([http://write.pub](http://write.pub)) It has both a WYSIWYG and raw markown editing mode. The USP is built-in git - if you ever wanted to showcase the power of version control to a non-programmer, but didn't want to put them through a git bootcamp, this might be the right tool for a common use case - note taking and writing

</comment><comment><USER25> My favorite scratch pad is a simple bookmarklet:

"data:text/html, <textarea style="font-size: 1.2em; width: 100%; height: 100%; border: none; outline: none" autofocus></textarea>"

Keep it open as long as you need, and it prompts to confirm before you close it.

</comment><comment><USER26> I've been using this all day and it's amazing.

It's not a replacement for a notes app. Instead, I'm using it to remind me where I left off on my work. It's helping me stay focused. Instead of seeing the distracting new tab screen, I see what I'm supposed to work on.

</comment><comment><USER27> For those using iCloud, another simple trick is to

      alias n='vim ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/Notes.md'

Then just type

      n

to access your scratch pad. All nicely synced between devices.

<comment><USER28> Wait, so if I do this in macOS, do I get formatted notes when I sync them to my iPhone if I use markdown syntax?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I just have a bookmarklet. If you're writing something so detailed it needs formatting, you shouldn't be doing it in a browser tab.

data:text/html;charset=utf-8,<title>Notepad</title><textarea contenteditable id=TE spellcheck=false autofocus></textarea>

</comment><comment><USER30> Too bad I gave up on Chrome...

<comment><USER31> Apparently, the Firefox API is now similar to Chrome's, if you use that. ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17507819](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17507819))

<comment><USER32> Similar enough that it's possible to run some Chrome extensions in Firefox. I've been using Foxified [1] to do this for a while, and while it's not always perfect, it worth a try in most cases.

[1] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/chrome- store-...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/chrome-store- foxified/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is interesting. Where are notes saved?

<comment><USER34> The documentation states that the notes are saved in localStorage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Cool idea. A vim mode would be neat (e.g. [https://codemirror.net/demo/vim.html](https://codemirror.net/demo/vim.html)).

</comment><comment><USER36> Thanks, I'll use this for entering my "three goals for the day" in the morning! (also, for those who missed it: The particle effects can be disabled in the settings.)

<comment><USER37> If you like things like that, try out the Momentum extension.

It's focused on short lived todo lists but also has some amazing random scenery pictures.

I've never had a more pleasant and welcoming new tab window.

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/momentum/laookkfkn...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/momentum/laookkfknpbbblfpciffpaejjkokdgca)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I have the following URL as the first bookmark on all browser bookmark bars:

      data:text/html,

It isn't nearly as featureful as a full Markdown editor, and it won't save the contents of the tab to localstorage or anywhere else, but it is about as simple a solution as you can get.

</comment><comment><USER39> Nice - but I wish it didn't take over the New Tab button since I use that for quick access; Since it's icon is in the status bar, why not just click on it to open a markdown tab?

*Edit: Yes, I know it's in the name of the extension :-) -- just wish I could change the default.

<comment><USER40> just fork it and add your "quick access" at the top of the page?

i've been using a custom new-tab-page extension for a long time, it even comes with an integrated alarm-clock!

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I am really confused on why this is useful and not any other proper-ish note taking application.

<comment><USER42> Think about "Why text files won for programming source code."

Rich formats like Smalltalk's images are vastly superior as long as you stay within the ecosystem. But plain text is "worse is better" at scale. You get more tools, more interoperability, more of everything.

Markdown is the plain text file winner for uncomplicated words. It's somewhat portable between a myriad of tools. When you drop into a "Better" tool like OneNote, you get all sorts of amazing wins... Provided you stay within the walled garden it provides.

Speaking as an author, I blog in markdown, I take notes in markdown, and I publish my books from markdown source for this very reason.

Heck, being able to put my books in GitHub and do pull requests is enough reason all by itself!

\---

If you meant, "Why a tab instead of a separate app that works with Markdown," none of what I wrote above applies. I was speaking strictly to why Markdown instead of some proprietary-format notes app.

<comment><USER31> " _Why a tab instead of a separate app that works with Markdown_ "

I'll bet the answer is similar: Everyone already has a browser open and quite a lot of notes are copy-n-pasted from other tabs. Availability, interoperability, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I like this. Could you guys add a mode that hides the right and bottom part and only shows the notes? Also, popping up a Markdown cheatsheet via a shortcut would be dope for those who don't use the syntax often.

</comment><comment><USER44> For Apple users, I use macdown[0] a stand-alone application that does basically the same thing, like it a lot.

[0] [https://macdown.uranusjr.com/](https://macdown.uranusjr.com/)]

</comment><comment><USER45> Look good. However, on mac I would really prefer using native apps for taking notes as they are fast and has a nice design like bear. Chrome can slow down easily and is unreliable at times.

<comment><USER46> Or because I usually have a gazillion tabs open.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> It would have been nice to have the text automatically formatted while you type instead of having "edit mode" to switch between plain text and formatted md.

Dropbox Paper does that really nicely.

</comment><comment><USER48> Use the Gingko App instead. It's even local these days. Whole tree of markdown in a single page,

[http://gingkoapp.com/](http://gingkoapp.com/)

</comment><comment><USER49> How can I add new notes? Or is it just a single page for all notes?

</comment><comment><USER50> How do you interpret these licensing terms:

License Copyright (c) Mihir Chaturvedi. All rights reserved. Licensed under the MIT License.

If Mihir has all rights reserved, what's the purpose of adding MIT with it?

<comment><USER51> Open source license does not mean giving up intellectual property rights. You can only license the work if you own the rights to the work.

MIT License starts with copyright notice:

        Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holders>

        Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
        obtaining a copy of this software and associated
        documentation files (the "Software"), to deal ....

<comment><USER52> OTOH, you don't need to say "All rights reserved" to hold your rights:

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Neat idea. I hope this idea gets dropped though

> To do: Other gimmicks to make it less minimalistic (?)

<comment><AUTHOR> I too was considering to remove that, I probably will!

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> This is neat, but are there any like this that you can pull up on your phone?

</comment><comment><USER20> This is a great idea!</comment>


Ask HN: Free email providers that support custom domains? - <AUTHOR> It seems that most of the bigger providers no longer support the usage of custom domains for free, but I'd love to hear that I'm mistaken.<p>Ideally I'm looking for IMAP access, but I'll settle for webmail if that is the only realistic choice. <comment><USER2> With migadu free plan you have unlimited mailboxes, storage.and domains, they only cap the daily amount of outgoing email.

[https://www.migadu.com/en/index.html](https://www.migadu.com/en/index.html)

<comment><USER3> Agreed. They're basic, but for low volume work well. Don't know how it would work for more users, they charge by number of sent emails for day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Try yandex, everything is free. I've been using yandex for about 6 years.

It's the biggest Russian "google". [https://domain.yandex.com/](https://domain.yandex.com/)

<comment><USER5> I would trust them even less than I trust the NSA^h^h^hUS.

<comment><USER4> That's better than US based sites. If you citizen of the US, then government don't have directly access to your e-mails.

<comment><USER5> I highly suspect that any entity that has the ability to monitor US communications also has the ability to monitor communications outside the US. (I'm strongly underestimating.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I had this issue as well. Mostly ive used namecheaps forwarding plus googles smtp to send. Because i lose forwarding when i change to cloudflare as dns, i created this: [https://ForwardMX.io](https://ForwardMX.io)

Most of my domains just receive. For these that need send i setup a alias in Gmail and use Googles SMTP (as mentioned)

</comment><comment><USER7> I set up free email with custom domain on Zoho, yesterday. You can set up to 25 free accounts IIRC.

<comment><USER3> Beware zoho is blocked all over the place. Many corporate firewalls simply block them wholesale.

<comment><USER8> We have a dedicated abuse monitoring team who work on mechanisms to control misuse of our system thereby reducing the chances of our sending IP getting blacklisted. In addition, we recommend users to configure proper SPF & DKIM records for better delivery of their outgoing mails.

Could you please describe the specific issue that you faced along with the complete bounce message or screen shot, by writing an email to email@example.com. This will help us to investigate further. Thanks. ^SP

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why free? Someone has to pay for the costs - and if it's not you then either the model will break or there is another catch.

</comment><comment><USER10> How many individual mailboxes (not aliases) do you want?

<comment><AUTHOR> Somewhere in the region 1-5. Certainly not many.

<comment><USER10> 25mail.st will give you a single mailbox, and you can alias usernames/domains. Beyond 1 they're paid though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip; not somebody I've heard of, and although the manual approval might be a pain it is an option at least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You could use zoho mail. It also offers imap access.

<comment><AUTHOR> Perfect - It wasn't obvious their free account supported custom domains, but I'm up and running just fine now.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How many of you want to stay small, part-time, and manageable? - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN, longtime reader, first time poster...
I've been bitten by the bootstrapping "bug" and I hope to launch my own micro-ISV in the next few months with a niche SaaS product. I've been inspired by many late nights of pouring over Patrick's (BingoCardCreator) blog, A Small Bear, Peldi's writings about getting Mockups off the ground and many others out there.
The thing I love most about HN is the diversity. There is the single-founder, bootstrapped "Shareware" guy with a handfull of lifetime solds having a discussion about sales techniques with a founder of a top SaaS firm and ego's never get involved.
With that said, I plan on being one those single-founder bootstrapped guys with a small number of customers. And I want to stay that way. I know I might be the minority here on HN and that is perfectly OK (each of us has different backgrounds, ambitions, and goals). A little bit more about my backgroud: I don't know what Series A funding is. I don't live near the Valley, San Francisco or NYC - I live in a small town in New Hampshire, USA. I don't Tweet, I'm shy, I've never met an angel investor and I don't have a blog. I provide these details because I hope they give you a little insight as to how much I'm not a loud, Twitter-happy founder ready to shake up the social media with a interweb 2.0 platform!
I enjoy writing software and also finding niche B2B voids to write software for. I've finally picked one and started writing some code. As I poke around HN and read the conversations, I'm curious how many of you are creating something small and manageable. I'm OK if my SaaS product, at $29/mo doesn't grow past 200 customers. Imagine that, grossing over 65K/yr to compliment my full-time software job! In fact, I don't think I want the headache that comes with 1,000 customers. At that point, you probably can't hold down your full-time job anymore. Then you're hiring, you're paying for additional accounting and legal fees, employees, taxes are increasingly complicated, multi-lingual releases, you need office space and your accountant wants you to become a Delaware corporation but some book you read said to incorporate in Nevada. My goodness!
Summary: Did you start out with small business plans but things took off? Do you sometimes wish your business was smaller and more manageable? Are a micro-ISV with just a few customers and absolutely love it? If someone popped up on HN and said they now have 200 SaaS paying subscribers and they are taking down the sign-up page to keep his/her business small and manageable rather than growing, would you laugh at the notion or, like me, completely understand his/her decision? <comment><USER2> I'm definitely in this camp: I quit a management-track job at a Fortune 50 a year and a half ago to teach business full-time. Finished a book (to be published December 30), have a full roster of consulting clients, an online course, and a few big licensing deals in the works.

I'm keeping the business small by design: I have absolutely no desire to manage/supervise the work of a large team - been there, done that, hated it. The maximum I'm willing to manage is a calling service and a part-time assistant, mostly to offload administrative work I'd rather not do.

I'd rather make a very good living and keep it simple (particularly with a child on the way) than spend my life compensating for the complexity that any huge operation inevitably has.

<comment><AUTHOR> >>I'm keeping the business small by design

Fantastic comment, thank you for taking the time to speak up. "Small by design" is exactly how I feel about starting a business.

That last sentence is a great statement. Larger operations can be complex and at some point it you might wake up one morning and _not_ look forward to managing your business. That is not what I want to happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't think it's a coincidence that you don't live in the Valley and you're thinking of bootstrapping a small business. In the rest of the country I believe you are firmly in the majority, so welcome to the club!

I've always wondered why this is. I'm from Chicago myself, and while we have a growing community of tech startups that is beginning to resemble the Valley, small business owners are much more the norm. My theory is a lack of infrastructure and culture. I think it's easier to find someone to quit their job and work with you on some big, "internet scale" project in SV because that's (almost) normal behavior there. Plus you have the venture capital ecosystem to back you up once it's time to scale. I know of a few great startups in New York that are struggling to secure VC, and I suspect their jobs would be much easier if they lived out West.

Personally, I'd love to tackle a huge problem. I have some crazy, disruptive ideas. But I'm starting out smaller so I can pay my own way, Chicago-style.

</comment><comment><USER4> For my own business project I aim to keep it manageable, this is easier when on your own as you have the luxury of picking your customers from those that are interested in your services. I have always been of the mind that if I can make enough money to live comfortably without disliking what I am doing then I will be happy. By making sure I don't have any "troublesome" customers and being proactive to move them to other providers I feel that I will be offering them a better service whilst maintaining my sanity and allowing me to support all of my other customers.

Its like a teacher who removes a loud student for the benefit of the others.

</comment><comment><USER5> I write for businesses, and I think a lot of us probably can't mainstream because either we can't handle a large load of customers suddenly pouring in (although it's probably our lifelong dream), or we don't want to take the chance in hiring more labor and hope everyone is as devoted and committed to the company's success as we are. There's probably a lot of other reasons, but those stand out the most to me. I certainly can't see business writing as becoming a "factory" type industry anytime soon, with those conveyors of word- smiths standing around waiting. :-)

</comment><comment><USER6> While his business is retail vs. B2B, you might want to check out Patrick McKenzie: <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11>

</comment><comment><USER7> Yup, except that's the only thing I do (no day job). Also I somehow never managed to make an app that was used by several people: all my projects are for one client each. Well, there was one who had two, but they merged (that was a fun moment... I'm still integrating).

</comment><comment><USER8> I wouldn't laugh. If you actually enjoy being employed, more power to you! It's ludicrous that you even feel the need to ask, to find out if the people in your community would mock you for not dreaming big enough, when you have decided what would make you happiest.

Note that I'm not criticizing _you_ , but the attitude of many around here that you led you to feel like you either have to boil the ocean or go home.

I _love_ being an independent businesswoman, but even my product is still only part-time. We've got about 580 paying users at <http://letsfreckle.com> and "we" is just me, my husband, and our new part-term intern-y guy. While we're picking up the dev/promo pace, I bet we don't put in more than 60 man-hours/wk total for all 3 of us.

Now, I do want to grow it (and our future SaaS projects) to a lot of revenue, but not a lot of people. My ideal company will employ 5-8 people. Just enough for a nice big family dinner.

I will say that if you put enough effort into the "mode" and interaction design of a product, that the customer support burden can be very small. We spend less than 30 minutes a day on emails. (Not counting work the emails might bring up, e.g. bug fixes, but that's not customer support!)

EDIT: I hate that phrase, "lifestyle business." We need a powerful term that doesn't conjure up the idea of giving us pats on the head because of our adorable little dreams. Any suggestions?</comment>


How do you find cofounders? - <AUTHOR>

I love entrepreneurship, but my projects consistently fail due to the exhaustion of juggling every ball. I've never sought others for help for three reasons: 1) My resume is practically non-existent, and I doubt I'd be able to negotiate a fair split with strangers. 2) I haven't befriended anyone knowledgeable enough about tech to cofound with that isn't otherwise engaged. 3) I don't have any money.<p>How do you find cofounders? How would you overcome being worthless on paper? <comment><USER2> Co-founders are by far the hardest part of starting a venture. Everyone has ideas, everyone has time and most of us have some money to invest in our own projects. Finding a co-founder is something you can't control yourself so it's always the first big hurdle.

The good news is that there are a ton of people just like you having trouble finding co-founders themselves. Great ways to meet them are:

1\. Meetups. These days, services like Meetup make it easy to find meetings of people interested in the same things you are. Whatever area you think you'd like to start a company, start going to a meetup or start your own meetup.

2\. Classes. Class is always a great way to meet people and work together. This doesn't need to be full time school, I've met great people in night classes (even in cooking classes).

3\. Start blogging. If you start writing about the topics that interest you and start reading blogs by other people on the same topic you'll realize who is like-minded. It's a lot easier to know someone is the right fit if you've already read their thoughts on the matter.

4\. Join a start up. This is the best option. Join an existing start up company. They are always full of people who are smart, take risks and will probably be interested in exploring your ideas with you. You can easily find start up companies in your area by browing the sites of nearby Venture Capital funds (see their investment portfolio) or searching Crunchbase.

Hope this helps.

<comment><USER3> Regarding your last option, I respectfully disagree that it's the best option. It is likely that an 'existing startup company' has already found it's co- founders, and a new hire will probably be coming on as an employee.

I think the risk/reward ratio are unfavorable for early EMPLOYEES in a vast majority of the cases.

<comment><USER2> That is true, but working at a start up for 2-3 years you will meet all the other employees that work at the start up company. It's those people (not the founders of the existing company) that are fertile ground for starting your own company. It does require a few years of time investment but most of the start up founder teams I know started this way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hello Yxven, I'm sort of in the same boat as you... I have been working on my start-up for a few months now, but I'm basically at a point where there's too much to do by myself. I'm more or less committed to seeing my project through, but I give each other a little advice or whatever.

</comment><comment><USER5> 1.Go to meetups for languages and like minded individuals (this is harder in small towns) 2\. Work on opensource 3\. The are sites like techcofounder and such, not sure how well they are though. 4.Another big city thing, go work in a coworking space (this does cost some money)

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd be curious to see what you've built. I'm pretty sure that's what everyone will say!

</comment><comment><USER7> Here! But be careful, find somebody as driven as you.</comment>


Ask HN: College dropouts whose startups failed, what's your story? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Not a dropout but I moved to partime work and quit living in a big city and moved to semi urban area. Since then I've been working on fun things</comment>


Show HN: My Personal Hacker News Reader - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sorpaas/reread

<comment><USER2> It would be nice to have a demo where you don't have to sign up (or install your own instance), or maybe at least screenshots.

<comment><USER3> Check out this demo [http://www.castbin.com/casts/rdcTPbRz](http://www.castbin.com/casts/rdcTPbRz) (It is made using my own tool.)

<comment><USER4> This is not a demo, this is a video of you using it.

<comment><USER3> I may have meant demo as a loose term meaning walkthrough of capabilities. It is definitely better than a screenshot.

According to Google demo (v) : demonstrate the capabilities of (software or another product).

I guess you found it useless. I would be happy if you can share your feedback to firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER5> > It is definitely better than a screenshot.

Didn't downvote, but here is a short explanation from one of those who prefer images to videos:

Some of us have a high threshold to watching videos. The reasons might vary from person to person (bandwidth, easily bored, firewalls, blocking every video because of autoplaying ads etc) but the fact is if text is not enough and there are no screenshots there is a significant chance I might have already hit the back button.

And before anyone goes off about entitlement: often I'm just reading something quickly while waiting for something else.

<comment><USER6> If I visit a page hoping for information, and there is a video with no text or other supporting context, I will close the tab immediately. If there is a video _and_ something to read, I will make sure the video is not playing and then read the text. Images are no problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think some work needs to be done on how the content flows, at the moment it doesn't feel very read worthy, rather - a lot of text stuffed on a single page. Perhaps, adding separate containers/divs for each specific content piece might fix this problem? At the end of the day, I want to read stuff, not browse it. :)

</comment><comment><USER8> I've tried to make an AUR package: [https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/reread- git/](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/reread-git/)

However, somehow I can't run the thing on my machine. I suppose port forwarding is not working for some reason.

</comment><comment><USER9> Some screens and description would be helpfull. So i cant see for what i should sign-up.

</comment><comment><USER10> Thank you for publishing your code. Very nice to read through it. Can you tell me, is it possible to 'like' or unlike someone else's article, by guessing the id?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry I'm a bit late.

No. It's not possible to guess someone else's article (I guess you probably mean reading records here). Those reading records must be get or set with a cookie that indicate the user has logged in with the right account (which is done by ajax in the code).

<comment><USER10> It looks to me that the url that calls queries_read_records.like_article() only requires a logged in user and a record id in order to set a read record as liked? Are you saying that is not possible to guess the id because it's not a sequential number by default in mongodb?

<comment><AUTHOR> The article id is public (they are public on the Internet anyway). But it's not possible (at least as designed) to access any user-specific information if not logged in.

<comment><USER10> I'm not talking about an information leak I'm talking about a potential denial of liking attack ☺

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> this is good. I like the UX. one suggestion is to make the logo much smaller on article pages. it is nice, but unnecessarily large (as is the top margin on article pages).

</comment><comment><USER12> Just one question: Can it automatically hide any links to techcrunch? That's the killer feature that's missing from all of these things.

</comment><comment><USER13> Nice tool! Thank you for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER14> Can you post a message?</comment>


Ask HN: hn for biz students? - <AUTHOR>

I'm not a biz student, but when I built hnDir for my school, some of the biz students feel sort of left out. Is there a community online that exists for business students, much like hn exists for hackers? <comment><USER2> <http://www.newmogul.com/>

<comment><USER3> HN-clone?

<comment><USER4> Yes but with a business focus. I think nickb created it.

<comment><USER2> he did

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> HN isn't solely for hackers, there are plenty of people here who can't write a line of code.

</comment><comment><USER6> Is HN open source? I never thought about that...

</comment><comment><USER7> <http://studentbusinesses.com>

</comment><comment><USER8> Forbes.com, Facebook.com, and Hamsterdance.com</comment>


Ask HN: Would you be interested in a Spam-call Blocker for your phone? - <AUTHOR>

Would HackerNews be interested in a personal phone system that not only blocks spam callers, but also has pre-screening (e.g caller states their name before picking up phone), and working hours (i.e phone only rings at certain times, other wise goes to voicemail)?
Somehow my phone number was leaked and I am getting bombarded with spam calls. I am thinking of building a personal PBX system that solves this. Google Voice falls short and hasn't been updated in years.
Anyone else experiencing the same problems and/or looking at similar solutions? <comment><USER2> Google Voice (yes you mentioned it but it still applies) does all of this as of now, so I don't really get what you want to upgrade? All there would be is a personal spam list that would get outdated rather fast.

Screening: [https://support.google.com/voice/answer/115083?hl=en](https://support.google.com/voice/answer/115083?hl=en)

Spam: [https://support.google.com/voice/answer/115089?hl=en](https://support.google.com/voice/answer/115089?hl=en)

Ring Schedule: [https://support.google.com/voice/answer/115145?hl=en&ref_top...](https://support.google.com/voice/answer/115145?hl=en&ref_topic=1708125)

<comment><AUTHOR> From my understanding, Google Voice is to be killed. They were suppose to do it in 2014 but have yet to phase out the product. I believe they'll roll parts of the product into Google Hangouts. Perhaps we'll hear of something at Google I/O

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > _blocks spam callers_

True Caller does this[1], as does Google Voice.

> _also has pre-screening_

True Caller does their own version of this, where they'll tell you the name if it exists in their database.

> _caller states their name before picking up phone_

Google Voice does this exactly.

> _working hours (i.e phone only rings at certain times, other wise goes to > voicemail)_

Google Voice does this, too[2]. There are also many apps that enable this. It may be a default feature of iOS and/or Android these days, for all I know.

1\. [https://www.truecaller.com/blog/avoid-spam-calls-with- trueca...](https://www.truecaller.com/blog/avoid-spam-calls-with-truecaller)

2\. [https://support.google.com/voice/answer/115145?hl=en](https://support.google.com/voice/answer/115145?hl=en)

<comment><AUTHOR> I used Truecaller and it's global spam block list had only a few hundred numbers on it.

I haven't been able to actually get Google Voice to prescreen callers. I know that they state they can do this, but haven't been able to implement it on my verizon phone.

<comment><USER3> You have to go into the web version of Voice and then into your Settings. You can't set it up from a phone, as far as I know.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've tried enabling it from the web interface and, even though it's selected and my number is properly configured, it still wont work :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There're already apps for that [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sg.sledog](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sg.sledog)

Every time after a user gets a spam call and hang up, he can tag the phone number and the tag will be stored in the database and used for all the other users.

So the more people tag, the more they benefit each other. If the call on your screen shows that it was tagged as freud, you don't have to answer it.

</comment><comment><USER3> > _Google Voice falls short and hasn 't been updated in years._

Please elaborate. I've used Google Voice for many years, and I've never had a problem with it. Hangouts integration took too long and wasn't perfect, but as a service, it's been reliable and great (especially for the price!)

</comment><comment><USER5> I never got a spam call, been using a personal mobile phone for 13 years. I would love an SMS blocker tho. I get tons of unsolicited, either scams or adds.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool! I've only received a few spam texts. I'll add this as a potential feature.

Are the text messages from short-code numbers (e.g "3948") or are they long- code number (e.g "555-555-1234")?</comment></comment>


Update on the Distrust of Symantec TLS Certificates - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2018/07/30/update-on-the-distrust-of-symantec-tls-certificates/ <comment><USER2> Is the certifi bundle (2018.8.13) on PyPI also updated? [https://pypi.org/project/certifi/](https://pypi.org/project/certifi/)

[https://github.com/certifi/certifi.io/issues/18](https://github.com/certifi/certifi.io/issues/18)

> _Are these still in the bundle?_

> _Should projects like requests which depend on certifi also implement this > logic?_</comment>


Groupon Sales Miss Estimates as Online Deal Demand Dims - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-13/groupon-sales-miss-estimates-as-online-deal-demand-dims.html

<comment><USER2> By coincidence, I got a random email from a Groupon recruiter 2 weeks ago to let me know they are having a recruiting event in Australia next month. I politely declined. :)</comment>


Facebook to pull chat from iOS and Android apps in favour of Facebook Messenger - <AUTHOR> http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2339143/facebook-to-pull-chat-from-ios-and-android-apps-in-favour-of-facebook-messenger <comment><USER3> The new battlefield is the real estate on your phone´s front page. FB + Messenger + Instagram + Whatsapp: 4 out of 16 icons, not bad.

<comment><USER4> iPhone 5* screen has a place for 20 icons + 4 in the dock.

<comment><USER5> Can you have folders on iOS? I've bundled all of my messaging apps together.

<comment><USER6> Is there people still using iOS?

<comment><USER7> I know I shouldn't feed the trolls but let's all be clear iOS still has a large percentage of web traffic, app downloads, and money spent in the app store/in-app purchases and it's lead it actually growing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I see this as a good thing.

It will hopefully reduce the memory and processing the main Facebook app leaves and at the same time it will give everyone a great opportunity to ditch the Facebook messaging service in favour of the plethora of other messaging apps already installed on their devices.

I, for one, will stop using the Facebook messenger entirely on my phone.

<comment><USER9> Will be interesting to see if they see this through. I might be missing something, but I don't see any business reason for them to do this. They will lose some users, and that seems a painful prospect for them. They value user bases so much that they paid $19B for Whatsapp.

Difficult to imagine them not reversing this decision at a later date.

<comment><USER7> Their purchase of whatsapp is exactly why they did this, IMO. I'd be very surprised if facebook messages doesn't become whatsapp and get completely tied into it. That's really the only way buying WhatsApp for $19B makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is incredibly annoying. For the last couple of months the FB app has been switching me to the messenger app every time I accidentally hit the messenger button in the middle of the bottom navbar. And every single time it nags me with a full screen interstitial asking me to turn on notifications!!! Removing all FB apps now.

</comment><comment><USER11> If the Messenger app will work without the Facebook app this could be a good thing? I would like to know about IMs people send me, but i have no interest in the stream of adverts and status updates...

<comment><USER12> I've been using the Messenger app exclusively for the past year, as I had no interest in looking through status updates or anything that the Facebook app did. Works wonderfully if you just want to respond to messages or send messages to people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been using the two apps for a while now and I'm perfectly happy - <USER2> only annoying aspect is sometimes I have a little red notification counter above both apps when I receive a message.

The principle reason why I like the Messages app is that it's very fast to load - presumably because it isn't trying to download my friends' terrible photos and timelines and events and all the other junk that is in the main FB app.

</comment><comment><USER14> I have tried and uninstalled Messenger a few times, it seems like a really bad user experience to be bounced out of the main app whenever you want to have a quick chat with someone.

Waiting for apps to multitask switch can get very irritating and I think for me it would mean I use Facebook chat less if anything.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm quite pleased about this actually. I find FB messenger to be annoying and I hate getting interrupted when I'm just popping into the FB app for a minute or two. This way I can leave it uninstalled entirely and check FB messages later from home.

</comment><comment><USER16> For people like myself who have Facebook on my mobile but not the messaging app it means we now need to install it.

For some percentage of folks like myself that means we might start using facebook messaging more instead of using it as the messaging platform of last resort.

<comment><USER17> Or just use a web browser and use the FB mobile website.

<comment><USER18> I use Tinfoil for this: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.danvelazco...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.danvelazco.fbwrapper)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7562642](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7562642)

</comment><comment><USER20> This is just an opportunity for Facebook to show twice as many ads as usual.

It's sad, but I really do feel bad for the people who use Facebook nowadays. When I have to look at the job market again, I'm really not looking forward to having to (a) sign up in the first place, (b) have that stupid like button following me around everywhere _again_ and (c) have to become "friends" with people that I really don't want to see anymore.

And then they bought Oculus VR. Seriously?

<comment><USER9> How does it let them show more ads? Users already spend a huge amount of their time on mobile devices in the Facebook app. One user can only pay attention to one app at a time.

<comment><USER20> I guess not on iOS, but on Android you have to go through a few more steps to "chat" \-- home > messenger app > search contacts > chat, versus just tapping a button. That is 2 more screens worth of ads to go through.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Looks like I won't be messaging anyone on Facebook from my phone then.

That was an easy decision.

</comment><comment><USER22> I dislike fragmentation, so this is probably a good thing? I don't use Facebook to really care either way though.

<comment><USER23> If you dislike fragmentation, then you shouldn't like this.

<comment><USER22> I was under the impression they're consolidating 2 messaging front ends into one? I guess they're really just deleting one, but same difference.

<comment><USER24> You could see it as that but if you were only using the Facebook app you'd be going from a single app to two apps

<comment><USER25> Fragmentation is having multiple incompatible versions of the same thing, namely, two apps which both have a Facebook chat.

Now there'll be one app with Facebook chat and one Facebook app without chat. No fragmentation.

<comment><USER26> There is absolutely fragmentation! What used to be one app is now three: Facebook (minus chat), Paper (with chat), and messages (only chat).

This time last year 2/3 of those apps did not exist. They have fragmented the user experience into entirely different apps. The concept you are mistaking for fragmentation seems to be the concept of duplication'. Right now all three apps do messaging and they will soon be reducing that number to two (Messages and Paper).

Not sure your math checks out…

<comment><USER25> Well I'll give you this example.

If Facebook would release 3 Facebook apps, where each has mostly the same features, but slightly different, and on top of that each requires a different user/login, that's definitely fragmentation.

Say, you can argue WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, or Instagram and Facebook picture posting represent fragmentation for Facebook, as they do mostly the same thing, but are each in their own space and with their own APIs and their own users etc.

Another example. iOS having lots of apps in one App Store is not "app store fragmentation". But Android having many separate app stores, many apps in each being the same (but tweaked or different versions) is "app store fragmentation".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Not much of a surprise. It's a necessary first step to slowly integrating WhatsApp.

</comment><comment><USER28> Oh great, now there's a double whammy 40 MB + 40 MB for the stupid MqttPushService that is run twice by the Facebook and the Facebook Messenger apps.

Might as well not use Facebook on this 512 MB device. Why can't Facebook just implement push via GCM without sucking all the memory and wakelocks itself?

<comment><USER29> Maybe it doesn't want to pass through a Google service.</comment></comment>


Trust the Algorithms, Not the Data - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ForecastThis/trust-the-algorithms-not-the-data-1e76d3254cb

<comment><USER2> Published Nov 2014, however seems to share some similarities with a recently released journal article: [http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11263-015-0812-2](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11263-015-0812-2)

Though the journal paper seems to disagree slightly with this statement:

> Do not force (even by mild assumption) the use of sophisticated algorithms > and complex models if the data does not support them. Sometimes much simpler > is much better.</comment>


C graffiti - <AUTHOR> http://www.boingboing.net/2009/10/09/c-graffiti.html

<comment><USER2> At an initial glance it looks like a forkbomb, but it isn't. The program is never going to get past:

        for (;;) {
            printf blah blah
        }

So the fork() call is only going to get executed once. It just fills your screen with lots of text, which doesn't "fuck yo memry."

<comment><USER3> But wouldn't the forked process also fork another process (which would do the same...), thus, eventually "fucking yo memry"?

<comment><USER4> Nope, only a single child process is created, and the parent and child go into an infinite loop. And two processes stuck in finite loops do not fucked memry make.

<comment><USER5> Indeed. Only twice as much "damage" as one process stuck in an infinite loop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's funny. I saw this on Boing Boing earlier today, and I thought to myself, "you know one of the things I like about Hacker News is that this wouldn't rate a place on the front page on Hacker News".

<comment><USER7> Yeah, things have gotten worse lately, and up 'till about the last week, I was an ardent defender of "everything's just fine." C'est la vie.

I think one small part of the problem is that you can never be hurt by having a bad submission, and there's a risk of payoff, so why not submit something. Then, once it's here, even a few clicks can get front page payoff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Be sure to check out the "Story of Mel," linked from one of the comments on the article:

<http://www.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/mel.html>

A bit more HN worthy than the buggy graffiti, perhaps.

</comment><comment><USER9> most awful piece of graffiti ever, more so than people who have stupid tags.

<comment><USER10> agreed. a broken php template would have been much more funny and meaningful.

<comment><USER11> Wow, tough crowd... :)</comment></comment></comment>


In the coronavirus era, the force is still with Jack Dorsey - <AUTHOR> https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/04/in-the-coronavirus-era-the-force-is-still-with-jack-dorsey <comment><USER2> That first paragraph reads like a parody of silicon valley...

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://archive.md/CIOhR](https://archive.md/CIOhR)</comment>


The JavaScript Community Has a Bullying Problem - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/javascript-scene/the-js-community-has-a-bullying-problem-96c10f11c85d#.h69w0qfu5 <comment><USER2> I think the JS community doesn't nearly have a bullying problem like other industries have. Face it - people are shit to each other and that won't change, it's human nature. In fact I think tech is doing relatively well compared to the rest of the world (case in point - publication of this article).

Let's take a look at the financial sector, shall we? Or legal? I think the phrasing 'bullying in tech' discredits marginalized people working in other places.

But I also want to add, no, we don't need even more positivity. We need realism. One of the things I love about our sector is how so many people just speak their mind, rather than think for 5 minutes how to send an internal email without offending any hypersensitive people. As a child you might've played on rubber tiles, but if you fall on the pavement wrong you break your jaw regardless. The world is harsh by nature, and at some point you should learn to deal with that.

</comment><comment><USER3> > I don't care who you are or who you know. I don't care if you think you're > funny. I don't care if you think I'm over-reacting.

> We need a lot less negativity and a lot more positivity in our community.

Agreed.

But is threatening a block spree, baiting people so you can banish them, after declaring you don't care to empathize with them _really_ promoting more positivity? Or is this just a piece we can upvote and get outraged over to feel better about having done nothing?

</comment><comment><USER4> Tech, in general, has this broader issue, and it ends up driving high-quality candidates out of our field. I'd like tech to be a "big tent", so that we can solve a wide diversity of problems. That can only be accomplished through inclusion, positive discourse, and thoughtfulness.

</comment><comment><USER5> Also beware the SJWs and the victim-bullies trying to play the Karpman drama triangle cards with manipulation, passive-aggression and disproportionate retribution.

<comment><USER6> Beware the mutant, the xeno, the heretic.</comment></comment>


Practical Metaprogramming with Ruby: Storing Preferences - <AUTHOR> http://www.kalzumeus.com/2009/11/17/practical-metaprogramming-with-ruby-storing-preferences/

<comment><AUTHOR> Inspired by previous HN discussion here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=943597> which discussed _how_ you go about programmatically creating methods in Ruby. This post provides more of the _why_. (Short version: get more stuff done faster, go home early!)

Unfortunately by the time I got the syntax highlighting working it was already 3:15 AM, so it is unlikely I'll have much to say in the comments. Enjoy the article!

<comment><USER2> Patrick, excellent post. I'm glad I asked you to do it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great article, thanks.

Another way to do this (and one that Rails makes extensive use of internally) is to override method_missing in your object, which gets called as a "last resort" whenever ruby can't find a method of a particular name. Inside this method you can check to see if the method being called matches one of the keys of your hash, and if so do what you need. This is a little bit more "meta" (if there is such a thing) than your example because the getters/setters for each of the options are never actually defined on the class, not even at runtime.

<comment><USER4> I'd argue that using define_method is a far better solution, for a few reasons.

First, you also should override respond_to? as well when using method_missing so that other people's code that relies on respond_to? doesn't break in mysterious ways. You have to make sure that both of these methods work consistently. This provides a few chances to break things. If someone else is metaprogramming and relying on instance_methods or methods, you would have to override those too to make things work consistently.

Also, using method_missing doesn't let you use alias_method_chain or several other metaprogramming techniques at all. For instance, since ActiveRecord models use method_missing to generate attribute accessors and dynamic finders, it's impossible to use alias_method_chain or something like it on them. You have to rely on ActiveRecord's unique and different kind of metaprogramming methods (alias_attribute, among others) which is, in my opinion, undesirable.

Finally, when using method_missing, you vastly limit your ability leverage inheritance or mixins at all. If you'd like to inherit from a class that relies on method_missing, it is impossible to use method_missing in that class without breaking behavior. It's also possible to define methods in mixins using define_method, while using method_missing in a mixin means it could stomp all over other mixins.

So, in conclusion, method_missing is something that I think should be considered generally harmful and a last resort. The original poster's use of define_method is more durable, less "magic", and a better option.

<comment><USER3> All excellent points. Sorry if my original comment wasn't clear -- I wasn't trying to say that method_missing is a better way to do it, just that it's a different way to accomplish the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another minor security nit: when you dynamically add accessors to an AR class, you make it harder to control which accessors should be exposed to mass assignment (foo.update(params)).

It was thoughtful for you to bring security up at all, though.</comment>


Search for Obama on Facebook and You Get Romney - <AUTHOR> http://diegobasch.com/search-for-obama-on-facebook-and-you-get-romney

<comment><USER2> Bidding on competitor terms is nothing new.

Yes, it might be a poor use of their money, but they can decide what to do with their ad money.

As a commenter on the blog noted: Google regulates this somewhat with their quality score algorithm and charges more for people with irrelevant ads & content, but at the ened of the day, if someone wants to bid their way to the top, it's still just an auction system and they can certainly do that if they want.

<comment><USER3> That is true for Google. However, we don't know if this is the case with Facebook. I have no insider knowledge, but I suspect that Romney's campaign must have approached Facebook and worked out a one-off deal. I see Romney as the top sponsored result _every_ time I try the search. Apparently it started several weeks ago. For me it won't stop showing up, even when it's clear that I have no intention of ever clicking on it.

My opinion is that it's a terrible way for Facebook to showcase their entry into the market of paid placement for search results.

<comment><USER4> Facebook is in the process of gradually rolling out sponsored search. I think businesses with big budgets get to cut to the front of the line.

What's curious to me is the difference between the Democrats and Republicans on this. The Romney campaign is clearly on the offensive as well as playing smart defense. If you search for Paul Ryan, you see Romney as the top result. If you search for Bill Clinton, either Ryan or Romney show up. The Obama campaign does not appear to be bidding on any terms.

<comment><USER5> There's no telling whether it's the campaigns themselves actually spending that money, is there?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This was discussed on Hacker News 23 days ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4441245>

My Facebook friends mostly just think it is funny. (That's regardless of what their political opinions are.)

</comment><comment><USER7> An important distinction between this and Google's sponsored search results in that it is happening in typeahead completion instead of on a results page. As far as I know, google does not put sponsored results in its completion suggestions (though even that is a little different: selecting a google suggestion takes you to the corresponding search page, not to where you ultimately want to go, as the facebook search does). And the real difference is that when you go to a page of google search results, even if there are sponsored results, you have to click on an ad to go there. In Facebook search, the expected result of typing someone's name into the search bar is to press enter and immediately go to their page.

I find the sponsored results in Google to be much less off putting.

<comment><USER8> _…google does not put sponsored results in its completion suggestions…_

Not yet, at least – but if you use 'Instant', where the results are appearing below the completion dropdown, you will see ads flashing there on less-than- your-full query.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow, by the looks of that screenshot Obama is absolutely thrashing Romney in terms of "Likes".

Maybe Obama is just more popular with a younger facebook using crowd?

<comment><USER10> Also, Obama has been the President of the US for 4 years. There are many people abroad who think Obama is a pretty cool guy, but haven't even heard of Romney.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hmmm. I see Obama as the first returned result. Not sure where the difference is. Could it be specific Facebook "tweaking" based on profiles?

<comment><USER12> It's an ad, you're probably not in the targeted audience for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> BINGO Blitz being #2 is a much more curious to me.

</comment><comment><USER14> To be fair, it's under a "Sponsored" heading (if you look hard enough).

I completely agree with the article. People complain about the screen real estate on Google results pages without realizing that the other things on the page are either highly relevant ads, or _tools to help you search better/efficiently_.

In this case, Facebook is doing the opposite. NOTHING about that is good and I don't know why anyone would pay for it. Anyone looking for Obama is not going to NOT NOTICE that they just wound up on Romney's page. They're going to roll their eyes, do the search again and be more diligent.

And Romney will have paid for that click in one way or another. Maybe I'll go do that search a few more times...

<comment><USER15> Actually, when I searched it came up like this:

<http://i.imgur.com/VycSD.png>

Not sponsored (for me). Just showing the opposite in the search results.

<comment><USER14> hehe, look about 10 pixels below where you typed "obama".

<comment><USER15> Oh geez. Duh. They are both sponsored. Reading fail on my part.

However, I guess that shows that even when you're looking for it... you sometimes don't see it, showing why these might be a terrible idea. Or a brilliant idea.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Simulated Stable Planetary System with 416 Planets in the Habitable Zone - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/i-built-a-stable-planetary-system-with-416-planets-in-the-habitable-zone <comment><USER2> Stable against what perturbations? What impact would a large body passing through the system have? Stable as in self-correcting (up to a limit)? What is the limit. Even long running accurate simulations of the three body problem are sensitive to perturbations...

<comment><USER3> I'd imagine each one of the planets would have an artificial gravity generator itself able to correct for gravitational disturbances

<comment><USER4> Assuming artificial gravity generators, who needs planets?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My understanding is that you can achieve higher density with a toroidal dyson swarm (e.g., [http://burtleburtle.net/bob/scifi/dyson.html](http://burtleburtle.net/bob/scifi/dyson.html) ) , although this has the drawback that planet position in the habitable zone varies.

</comment><comment><USER6> For what definition of stable? Stable in 2d? 3d? 3d + expected disturbances from solar winds, passing objects, solar flares, etc? How about the decreasing mass of the sun? Over a year? Century? Million? Billion?

<comment><USER7> The atmospheric drag on a planet could make its orbit wobble enough to cause a cascade effect through the entire system.

As soon as one planet wanders a bit too far out of line it'll smack into others going the opposite direction and the debris will take out all the others inside of a few revolutions.

Interesting, but highly risky.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Fun article! Thanks for posting. Geoengineering is too narrow minded. We need star system engineering!

As, by-the-by, how important are "habitable zones" to the Drake equation these days?

We have an abundance of earth-life adapted to almost any temperature conditions commonly found on earth. Doesn't this imply that the total viable is wider than what we find here?

How cold could a planet be and still have chemosynthesis?

</comment><comment><USER9> It'd be really interesting to see some renderings of what the sky would look like from the surface of a planet in this system.

<comment><USER10> Aren't they all in the same plane - so you'd have have a few hundred visible in a narrow band across the sky. Would look pretty interesting....

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't understand why the outer orbits are limited to the same number of planets as the inner ones. What's the story there?

<comment><USER12> Didn't do the math myself, but I guess it's the resonance. You want the inner planet's gravity to cancel the outer one's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> That looks incredibly unstable and it feels like the gravity between the rings would easily counter their opposite rotations considering the amount of planets involved. Would not want to live there, but am interested within how many days this all crashes into the sun (and what happens to the sun with that amount of planets smashing into it)

<comment><USER12> > what happens to the sun with that amount of planets smashing into it

The mass increase would be a rounding error. The Sun is more than 300,000 times more massive than the Earth. It'd be a time for somewhat spectacular fireworks and the life of the star would be somewhat shortened (by the addition of some heavy elements) but, apart from that, nobody would be able to tell there was once a very large art installation around that star.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can someone shed light the significance of his extra terrestrial life equation:

N = R × N(Earth) × F(Life) × F(Intelligence) × F(Communication) × L

The individual components are quite straightforward. What I don't get is that it seems like breaking one problem down into several more unknown problems none of which really help. In fact, it seems a harder to know the individual frequencies than it would be to actually find any single ET life. Even if we found life, we still wouldn't have a much of a clue of the frequencies (unless, I suppose, the ET life had mapped or sampled the universe and shared that knowledge with us or gave us FTL tech -- one can dream!).

Other discussions have focused around approximation of the # of habitable planets, which makes total sense.

I guess my question is what knowledge or insight would enable us to estimate the frequency of life occurring?

<comment><USER15> How else would you estimate N?

<comment><USER14> It just seems circular to say N can be estimated by looking at the frequency of life occurring. If we knew the frequency of life occurring we'd have a lot _more_ information than what N would tell us, wouldn't we?

Maybe I'm overthinking this, but I see the problem as akin to someone giving me an uncountably large number of boxes with each having a some chance between zero or more of them containing a treasure of immeasurable value. The value of the treasure approaches infinity, so even a near 0 chance of its existence means that it has a positive ROI. In that vein, it doesn't really matter what the odds are of finding life, it is a justifiable expenditure that will statistically pay for itself.

Unless the formula can take down to actually zero the odds of their being discoverable life it doesn't change the calculation. That is, whether the odds are 1e-1000% or 99% we should expend basically the same amount of resources to find it.

<comment><USER16> You might be able to estimate those frequencies without actually counting them on other planets. For instance, by measuring the time between when Earth became habitable and when life started. Or by comparing the number of Earth's species that never became intelligent to those that did.

It could also tell us what the consequences will be of actually making big discoveries like managing to recreate life from scratch in the lab, find it on Mars, or find life on earth opposite chirality indicating independent orign. If we do (or can't!) find those things, how much will that help us predict that we find other civilizations in the galaxy?

I don't think the infinite value argument really works. Finding aliens isn't worth sacrificing everything else for if it's extremely unlikely to succeed. We could just carry on without knowing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This would be hilarious just for the eclipse combos.

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't know much about astronomy, but isn't the habitable zone highly dependent on the star?

Like, how big and hot it is?

I could imagine it always has the same "width" but I could imagine that the zone of a rather big and hot star has a much higher circumference and would allow for more planets.

Also, if the planets are in the same plane, wont they eclipse every now and then?

</comment><comment><USER19> "Our moon is almost half the size of Earth" Oh really???!! What universe are you living in? The moon's radius is about 1000 Miles, Earth's about 4000. So about 1/4 the size and only about 1/80th the mass. (Yes, 1/80th, look it up).

</comment><comment><USER20> Would it be easier to have one giant planet in the habitable zone with 416 moons?

</comment><comment><USER21> "You can't take the sky for me" header opportunity missed.

Time to watch Firefly again!

</comment><comment><USER22> Should be: "I Simulated a Stable Planetary System with 416 Planets in the Habitable Zone"

It's amazing to think how far a civilization would have to advance to go from "simulated" to "built" for something like this.

<comment><USER23> It's amazing to think about how far our civilization has advanced in 40 years, going from giant government projects to calculate the orbital path for a single Earth-Moon trip to having a single researcher casually calculate the gravitational interactions of 417 bodies to discover a stable configuration.

<comment><USER24> Calculating the orbital path was not the hard part of the Earth-Moon trip.

<comment><USER25> Maybe, but simulating it fast enough to make corrections on-the-fly was not trivial.</comment></comment></comment></comment>