Zuckerberg's list of 20 must-read books - <AUTHOR> https://agenda.weforum.org/2015/10/20-books-mark-zuckerberg-thinks-everyone-should-read/?utm_content=buffer80eae&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer <comment><USER2> This is more interesting as a list of "what is Zuckerberg reading", than a list of things anyone should care about reading.

His reading and takeaway of Orwell's Revenge, for example, is astounding in the context of Facebook. You really start to wonder how self-aware old Zuck really is. Or isn't.

<comment><USER3> It isn't really "What Zuckerberg is reading" though, it's one of many PR/business moves. Just like learning Chinese (to reach China, a billion+ users), Sherylberg doing her part (to keep/reach 3.5 billion), and so on forth.

You'll notice that the Zuckerberg list is interesting for a few reasons.

Specifically, the authors. They're from all over the place. They're all races.

* White woman: Eula Biss

* Black woman: Michelle Alexander

* Indian man: Venkatesh

* Muslim man: Ibn Khaldun

* Chinese man: Suk-Young Chwe

* White man: Peter Huber

* Jewish man: Thomas Kuhn

It's a list designed to appease all people and paint Zuckerberg in a nice, relatable-guy light.

The subject matter is very diverse too: he's got the Pixar interest -- oh my, I love Pixar movies! He's got the nice nerdy physics interest? Me too! He's reading about Orwell! About spirituality! etc.

Look, I'm sorry if my reading comes of as being cynical... this is just how the game works. When I was writing for a magazine, my editor and I did the same thing. For whatever it's worth, the book list by itself is nice... go read the books, but don't read them because "Zuckerberg is suggesting" them to you -- he's not, this is a business, PR-move, read them because they are good books by themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Mark Zuckerberg doesn't seem like the sort of individual from whom I would seek a book recommendation.

<comment><USER5> That was my knee-jerk reaction, but he has quite a few books I have read and liked on his list (and they aren't all obvious choices - Ibn Khaldun, for example).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't care what Zuckerberg's must-read books are.

</comment><comment><USER7> ALL HAIL ZUCK. HE IS THE NEW OPRAH. BOW DOWN.</comment>


AT&T Launches $500M Joint Venture To Invest In The Next Netflix - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/22/att-launches-500m-joint-venture-to-invest-in-the-next-netflix/

<comment><USER2> Canadian telecom operators are in a unique position because their parent corporations typically already own partial or full stakes in various media properties or networks, but generally most other operators around globe are trying to figure out how to "deal" with over-the-top (OTT) players like Facebook, YouTube, Netflix, etc.

AT&T's approach to invest in OTT players themselves is a good move that I anticipate other carriers copying through their venture capital investment arms, provided they can hit on one or two "unicorns" along the way.

EDIT: As noted in another thread and article, AT&T failed last year in their bid to acquire Hulu, so now they're using a different approach.

</comment><comment><USER3> > It's a sign that the network provider is betting on an OTT > model as a > likely eventual successor for terrestrial > content delivery methods like > broadcast TV.

I would argue AT&T's Uverse TV service is already "over the top" from a technology standpoint, being based on IP multicast and DSL.</comment>


Ask HN: How do I raise money? - <AUTHOR> What are the pre-requisites and where do you meet investors looking to invest in startups? <comment><USER2> You can always team up with a direct-sales merchandiser (me, for example) and do a fundraiser that will benefit both parties. You get a certain percentage of sales that you can use your startup, the merchandiser gets the traffic you drive to his/her product. Win/win! I sell affordable, stylish jewelry that people actually want, so if you're interested, hmu: [https://www.chloeandisabel.com/boutique/bethanycannon](https://www.chloeandisabel.com/boutique/bethanycannon)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the offer but at this point, I already have strong interest from a local VC and at this point I'm shopping to see if there are any VC's from the south of the border.

Best of luck in your venture.

Cheers.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Sports betting between friends - <AUTHOR> http://nospronos.com/en With my friends we wanted to have a nice friendly competition (no money involved) about the football worldcup by predicting the results.
I though this might interest other groups of friends so I coded a website just for that in 3 days.
Nothing ground breaking but I like the suscription system "Doodle" style with just links, no personal infos...
Tell me what you think ! <comment><AUTHOR> With my friends we wanted to have a nice friendly competition (no money involved) about the football worldcup by predicting the results.

I though this might interest other groups of friends so I coded a website just for that in 3 days.

Nothing ground breaking but I like the suscription system "Doodle" style with just links, no personal infos...

Tell me what you think !

<comment><USER2> Can you put that info in the original post?

<comment><AUTHOR> I wish I could !

Edit: Well Actually it would help if you could upvote my comment. At least it'd be at the top of the pile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Friendly spelling check: "No suscription process" has "subscription" spelled incorrectly.

Also: "That's why you're here, aren't you? Do your forecast until the day before the each game, look at the stats, have fun with your friends !" has an unecessary "the" between "before" and "game". I'd rewrite the whole thing as:

"That's why you're here, aren't you? Do your forecast until the day before each game, look at the stats, and have fun with your friends!"

Still kind of an awkward sentence though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks ! Copy/pasted your suggestion. English is not my greatest strength.

By the way I originally wrote everything in French. If some people prefer this just go to [http://nospronos.com](http://nospronos.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Brilliant! Loved the minimal interface. Awaiting graphs.

Would it be possible to provide a search bar to search for leagues on the homepage ?

"Keeping URLs safe" seems to be too geeky. I personally don't mind but my friends who join my league won't be so tech oriented.

EDIT: Also, you ask for the league name while creating it. might as well make it convenient for users to use that name. Separately, the URLs for the leagues could be simplified to contain the name instead of numbers.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right. There's no real privacy to protect with the urls... I'll change it even for private leagues.

For the users however the "safe" url is useful otherwise people could guess other people's url and change their predictions!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is great! Every time the world cup, eurocup, american cup comes around, me and my friends start a "quiniela" as this friendly betting game is called here (and elsewhere in the spanish speaking regions). I always think about coding something like this but never get around to it. We end up using a hacked up Excel spreadsheet.

One suggestion: make it so that each league can modify their rules. The one I'm currently playing gives 1 point for getting the goals of team A, 1 for getting team B, 1 for guessing the winner or a tie and an additional point for getting the exact score. Don't know why but we've always played it that way, and I know there are other quinielas around that have their own rules.

I love that I don't even need to sign up. Great work! I would like to see how you made it (when you get the chance to make a write-up).

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you like it ! Yes being able to chose a set of rules for each league would be a good idea ! I'll try implement it soon .

If this is popular in the Spanish speaking world, I should try to translate it in Spanish. In case you are up to do it, that would be great ! my email is tistbajean AT gmail DOT com !(there is one file with every sentence in the site, I would say around 10-15min of work)

<comment><USER5> Sure I would be glad to! Sending you an email right now.

I am actually just starting a translation service for web sites, apps, documents and basically anything that can be translated. Thanks for letting me shamelessly promote my services haha!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's nice to have fun sport apps!! I'm a soccer (football) fanatic myself. Using meteor and "Discover Meteor" I built a fun app to have between friends:

Same concept as Hacker News but with GOOOAALLS instead of news. POST GOALS from your favorite players and vote for the best of them.

I cannot say that the site is ready for production environment but any feedback is appreciated: \--===== www.goalgoalgoal.co ====--

ALLEZ LES BLEUS :)

</comment><comment><USER7> Hey. Nice job on the app.

I have a BIG concern:

Why don't you input our teams into the Round of 16???? Why wait until you have the REAL results to input them?

People who didn't predict the winners (those teams which will get into the round of 16) should be penalized for not getting the teams right!!!! So why let people make predictions on Round of 16 if they didn't even get the teams right!?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes... I though about this ! But I though that was more fair ! I mean if you get everything wrong before the round of 16, then you have no chance at all to get back in the game !

Here, at least you can still save face for the final rounds, it will keep people who performed poorly at the group stage interested in the challenge I think, no?

<comment><USER7> No, your way is unfair.

According to the current rules, the following scenario is possible:

A guy who guesses the "Round of 16" teams correctly might have the same amount of points (or even lower) than a guy who didn't get a single "Round of 16" team correctly (just because he/she got the scores right often).

So now, you are letting the guy who didn't get a single team right get even more points and surpassing someone who got the winners correctly (but unfortunately didn't get the scores right).

Basically, people who don't get the teams right should be weeded out. That's only fair.

Also, if you want to let someone make a comeback, you might want to consider giving different points for different levels.

Start from the top: Getting the champion right (16 points) Second place (8 points) Semifinalists (4 points)

This is just an idea. Please research how other websites do it but right now the award system is lacking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can you explain the numbers on this page? I don't understand what they represent: [http://nospronos.com/en/tab/grandchallengemondial2014](http://nospronos.com/en/tab/grandchallengemondial2014)

Note, I haven't registered to provide my own input.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, it's the scores for when the competition starts!

So far the worldcup hasn't begun so everybody is at 0... But when the games are played the ranking will evolve !

See the rules for more precisions : [http://nospronos.com/en/regle- jeu](http://nospronos.com/en/regle-jeu)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> [http://gamblino.com](http://gamblino.com) lets you do the same thing but on an app.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is fun, but basically the website will die after the worldcup? Do you intend to make it work for other sports even?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've created it for the Worldcup, but yes if I get a bit of traction I can make it work in no time for other football related events (Premier League, Champions league...) or even different sports (I'm thinking Wimbledon, Rugby worldcup)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is it open source? I would love to write a better CSS (and HTML) for it but I can't find the code.

</comment><comment><USER12> Great! I was thinking of doing it myself. You are right on time :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad I could help, I hope you and your friends enjoy !

<comment><USER12> (Comme tu es Français, je me permets...) Je suis sûr que les friends vont aimer, mais les faire adhérer et suivre, c'est la partie difficile de cette affaire! As-tu prévu de mettre des notifs sur Facebook ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Tu peux détailler ce que t'entends par là? Genre des notifications "X vous invite à jouer à Y"? Non j'ai tendance à détester les applis qui font ça !

Par contre je vais rajouter un bouton de partage facebook pour le site c'est une bonne idée.

<comment><USER12> non c'est vrai que c'est horrible. Je pensais plus à "une nouvelle victoire de X dans Nospronos (Brésil-Croatie). U reste leader." Un peu comme les commentaires sportifs quand on parle du classement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> what's the numbers on the average predictions mean (they are all 1.x)? also you've forgotten to translate some countries from French (Cameroun, Chil)

<comment><AUTHOR> Well it means that on average people thought that this team would score 1.x goals during this game.

I was also surprised by the small differences between teams.

<comment><USER13> Funny not enough people want to predict more goals, WC recent average I think is around 2.5.</comment></comment></comment>


This Plane Accidentally Flew Around the World - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/s/story/the-long-way-round-the-plane-that-accidentally-circumnavigated-the-world-c04ca734c6bb <comment><USER2> Crazy awesome story sad to see it get lost without more attention</comment>


Bitcoin-qt-i2p: A Bitcoin wallet for the I2P network - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/VirtualDestructor/bitcoin-qt-i2p

<comment><USER2> Reply to eeky (you're hellbanned): no, this does not make transactions anonymous, these are still pseudonymous. The difference is that you won't reveal your IP this way while using the client. Using the regular Bitcoin-Qt client with Tor has the same result. The novel thing here is that this uses the I2P network.

<comment><USER3> From what I know about i2p - there is no gateways to "outside" internet. As a result, this will work only with other i2p bitcoin clients, correct?

<comment><AUTHOR> There are fewer gateways than Tor, but it will connect to the internet and function normally.

<comment><USER4> By the way, "outproxy" is the word for them. (In case others don't know)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Does Lazy Evaluation Work in Haskell? (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://apfelmus.nfshost.com/articles/lazy-eval-intro.html <comment><AUTHOR> The first in a series of articles, a list of which can be found here [https://apfelmus.nfshost.com/articles/lazy- eval.html](https://apfelmus.nfshost.com/articles/lazy-eval.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> See also Peyton Jones' book (from 1987):

[https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/the- imp...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/the- implementation-of-functional-programming-languages/)

<comment><USER3> I just spent some time implementing a lazy VM: Note also the push/enter VS eval/apply implementation change in GHC described in [1].

[1] [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/make- fa...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/make-fast-curry- pushenter-vs-evalapply/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's an educational video on the topic: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW3HZwBDpiU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW3HZwBDpiU)</comment>


Ask HN: For those who dislike GoDaddy... - <AUTHOR>

Like many other folks, I detest GoDaddy for numerous reasons. I'm not here to argue wether or not their actions merit such disdain. We are all entitled to our opinion and if you are a GoDaddy fan, by all means feel free to ignore this post. This is not intended to be a GoDaddy bashing thread.<p>On to my question. For those who, like me, have abandoned GoDaddy for greener pastures, do you feel a bit disgusted when you find a particular site uses them as their registrar and/or certificate authority? I realize this is spiteful and even perhaps a bit silly. However, I personally feel that GoDaddy and their track record is so utterly untenable that I can't help but to feel this way. Of course for some companies moving registrars and certificate authorities isn't so easy or even impossible. But for indie developers and startups I feel it's a bit of an embarrassment. It just comes off as tone deaf to what has happened on the web over the past few years. Do you feel the same distaste as I do? <comment><USER2> I used them and although I do not agree with the things they have done as a company, it is extremely difficult to move all my domains, since I have been using them for years.

So, don't judge. I don't agree with them but at the same time I can't justify spending the amount of time and money it would take to move 40+ domains.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, but by no means strongly.

Even before more recent actions like their stance with SOPA, I always found their commercials distasteful so I never used their service. I judge websites a little bit and people who mention GoDaddy as a place to buy a new name from, but probably less than I would judge someone for throwing out an aluminum can vs recycling it. It is a venial sin.

</comment><comment><USER4> This will put me in your potential dislike bucket but while I dislike GoDaddy and can't recommend them either, I wouldn't judge others for it. Many may not even be aware of the distasteful things they've done or don't mind their upsells, etc... It's pretty poor to judge sites and people base on the service they use.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm quite sure any people who continue to use them probably haven't been made aware of or taken the time to consider their missteps. And if someone wants to continue doing business with GoDaddy that's their prerogative. I must disagree with you though in regards to it being poor to judge a site based on the services they use. Who you support with monetary contribution says everything about you and your values. Especially when there are other options in the marketplace. That's the reality of running a modern business whether you like it or not. If you align your brand with a controversial figure then you must be prepared for the backlash. It's not always fair but it's how the world works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> That feeling when you check your cc balance, and you notice that godaddy took 5$ for some service you never wanted in the first place...

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes, because my... "due dilligence" learned years ago of their business practices and, to my mind, questionable behavior.

OTOH, I've read that for more than just "register a domain" service, at times their feature set and prices have been hard to beat. OTOOH, that from people who know what they are doing and simply work around the crap.

</comment><comment><USER7> I still have at least one domain with Godaddy. I can't afford to move it. Other domains happened to get moved earlier this year, kind of by happenstance, not due to me taking a stand on the issue (though my impression is the individual who handled the move feels somewhat strongly on the issue). I have trouble getting my ire up over it, even with the elephant incident and whatever else I have heard. I imagine you wouldn't appreciate my reasons for that. And I am not really a hacker, just someone with a few websites. So perhaps you don't really care what I do.

Which is to say I kind of dislike Godaddy, and I expect to eventually move away from them, but, for a number of reasons, it isn't worth it to me to make a big stand on the issue or judge others for using them.

</comment><comment><USER8> Yes, I agree 100%. The elephant slaughter was enough to move all my domains and recommend all my clients do the same.

I also refuse to support a website that registers GoDaddy, although I will do project work (cuz, hey, I need the money). They just won't get technical support from me and they are told upfront about that.</comment>


Why the mobile web runs so slowly - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-33639439 <comment><USER2> > We've all tried to stab a link with a finger only to have the page leap down > so you accidentally hit the ad that you then have to kill to get at the > actual page.

<3 <3 <3

This happens so often to me. Please, people, add height/width to your images so that when the image loads/fails to load, the layout doesn't change.

And if you're using HTML5 postMessage for resizing iframes without scrolling, please use a fading animation on the height attribute. Side note: WHY ISN'T AUTO HEIGHT SPEC'D IN HTML5?!?!?!?!?

Oh, one thing I forgot: many, many people are too fucking stupid to deploy proper caching (e.g. using ETags, proper Expires headers,...) on their assets, thus causing needless requests. And for "larger scope" stuff you can use a HTML5 cache manifest to restrict all the queries for expiration to a single one for the manifest file.

</comment><comment><USER3> This might be a stupid question, but that thing where the page jumps as you're about to touch it to tap or scroll, and instead unwittingly hit an ad -

Is that sometimes done on purpose? To increase clicks on ads?

Or is it just a matter of the dom redrawing in unpredictable ways as ad comment comes in?

I also often see the practice where a page completely loads, and then the page seems to entirely reload. And it makes me wonder if that's also an attempt to juice stats.

<comment><USER4> The companies that serve the ads have ways of finding out if the ads are being clicked organically. If they see ads on a certain website being clicked a disproportionate amount of times, they will investigate and make sure it doesn't happen again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Typekit.

</comment><comment><USER6> I probably wouldn't have bothered to read this if I was using a mobile device as BBC.com is one of the worst offenders in regards to this problem.

<comment><USER7> That's not true at all: [http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/01/business/cost-...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/01/business/cost- of-mobile-ads.html)

The BBC is, by far, one of the best. An average BBC page literally requires an order of magnitude less data usage than a page from Boston.com.</comment></comment>


Please review this fun side project - like literally - <AUTHOR> http://likeliterally.com/

<comment><USER2> The 99p Challenge had a section like this ... might have to go re-listen to these now

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/99pchallenge/></comment>


How Genius annotations undermined web security - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/25/11505454/news-genius-annotate-the-web-content-security-policy-vulnerability <comment><USER2> I'm not even that surprised. The genius web annotator is really half-assed, functionality-wise as well.</comment>


Cloud MBaaS and open source MBaaS: What's the difference? - <AUTHOR> http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/feature/Cloud-MBaaS-and-open-source-MBaaS-Whats-the-difference

<comment><AUTHOR> In this Q&A, Shah compares open source MBaaS to cloud MBaaS, discusses implementation barriers and shares his insights on usage trends.</comment>


What's Inside a Slim Jim? (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-09/st_whatsinside

<comment><USER2> Why did I read this? It's kind of like that article I read about chicken nuggets.</comment>


Riak CS 1.4 Released; Features OpenStack Swift API Integration - <AUTHOR> http://basho.com/riak-cs-1-4-is-now-available/

<comment><USER2> Is the apparent ability of CS 1.4 to manage large binary content (streaming video?) something new to Riak? Or has it had this capability all along?

Is the new feature set Swift specific, or is content management the new feature?</comment>


The Origins of Scandinavian Noir - <AUTHOR> https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2020/05/06/the-origins-of-scandinavian-noir/ <comment><USER2> As a fan of the "Millennium" Swedish TV miniseries, with a fantastic Noomi Rapace as the original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo[a], I found this piece fascinating.

I knew very little about "Scandinavian Noir," and in fact didn't even think of it as a genre until reading the OP.

Now, I want to read the "Beck" novels and also watch its Swedish TV/film adaptions, if there are any.

\--

[a] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_(miniseries)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_\(miniseries\)) \-- In my humble opionion, the Swedish TV adaptations of Stieg Larsson's books are much better than the Hollywood movie adaptations, which tend to be much flashier and have more special effects but don't feel or bite quite as hard as the Swedish TV miniseries.

<comment><USER3> "and also watch its Swedish TV/film adaptions, if there are any"

There's about 50 or so of them, of varying quality. Most (if not all) of them feature length.

<comment><USER4> Those are more recent,and independent of the novels, but some of the original novels have been made into movies too. I'm not sure if all the novels have movies, but I particularly remember watching "The fire truck that disappeared" on TV as a kid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting to read articles like this, describing the culture you take for granted to outsiders. I devoured Ture Sventon, Kalle Blomkvist and Agaton Sax as a child, but I had never thought of them in the broader context of Scandinavian Noir. You can sort-of see the connection, but it's a bit tenuous: all of these take place in child-appropriate idealized world, they have nothing of the social realism/commentary of Sjöwall/Wahlöö and the later Scandinavian noirs. A closer comparison might be The Adventures of Tintin (obviously not Swedish, but hugely popular in Sweden), which had some of that "social commentary + detective stories", but even that is a bit weak.

I think it is fair to say that the genre was essentially invented by Sjöwall/Wahlöö. There isn't much precedence, and you can see strong traces of them in all of their successors. If you're going to trace their inspirations, I would suggest that you shouldn't seek it so much in detective fiction, but rather in things like naturalism and other lefty/socialist fiction movements. Emile Zola is a better place to look than Dashiell Hammett.

<comment><USER6> what are urban scandinavian noirs that you would suggest to read today ?

(the urban is in context of topics of technology/privacy, etc which are prevalent in the Dragon Tattoo series)

<comment><USER7> Have not read myself but Åsa Schwarz could be something for you. Security expert and author

[https://asaschwarz.com/category/novels/](https://asaschwarz.com/category/novels/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maj Sjöwall died very recently, the 29:th of April.

<comment><USER9> The obituary I found mentioned Simenon as an influence, which makes sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've in the mindset that good chefs can do really good food without too much sugar, salt and fat, but for someone used to sugar it can sometime feel bland, until you start to cut down on it and suddenly you appreciate an oyster (for example) way more. It's the same with action packed, jumping from skyscraper to skyscraper, kind of movies and fantasy-books.

In that sense the Beck-series with its realism (real police-work) and bland social surface only needed the social commentary to get a grip of you after a heavy non-action diet which to me signifies good authors.</comment>


Tool of the Day: Keep Track of Your Conversations With Silentale - <AUTHOR> http://www.usefultools.com/2009/11/keep-track-of-your-conversations/

<comment><USER2> My current side-project is doing something like this. I have IM and IRC logs going back to 2001 and wanted them in a single format in a database.

I'm at the point where the logs can be loaded and searched, and am currently trying to decide what to do about merging the identities of different people. I've got about 2000 unique names and have been thinking about what sort of interface to use to unify and hide ones that don't matter (exactly the problem the author of this article is having).

I didn't think it was viable for a business, so I'll be curious to see what happens with them.

If anyone's interested in my source code, it's on github (<http://github.com/jeffjenkins/cdb>). It handles Adium (HTML and XML), Miranda, Trillian, and Colloquy (and almost mIRC)

edit: there's also a fairly basic UI which I can put up somewhere if people are actually interested in using this.</comment>


Dubai murder suspects climb to 26 - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/02/24/uae.murder.plot/index.html

<comment><USER2> How is this relevant to Hacker news?</comment>


Reddit CEO Admits 'We're Still In The Red' - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com.au/reddit-ceo-admits-were-still-in-the-red-2013-7 <comment><USER2> Reddit is an interesting community and very volatile. 70 million monthly readers, but at the same time a passionate community that is heavily opinionated and reactive to any major change. It must be tricky running Reddit, but I do hope they become profitable because if any site deserves it, it's Reddit.</comment>


Lenovo's flagship ThinkPads brick themselves upon a single common BiOS switch - <AUTHOR> https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-X-Series-Laptops/Thinkpad-X1-Extreme-Black-Screen-Help/td-p/4286292 <comment><USER2> More evidence that we need control over the BiOSes running on machines we own.

</comment><comment><USER3> ... again? didn't they just fix an issue like that?

</comment><comment><USER4> this has been known to be an issue on /r/thinkpad for a while now, i dont doubt there will be a fix very soon if there isnt one already</comment>


[video] Build a working web application using 3 docker containers in 2 minutes - <AUTHOR> http://marmelab.com/blog/2014/06/04/demo-symfony-with-docker-and-gaudi.html <comment><USER2> If I have two pieces of bread and a slice of ham, I can certainly make myself a ham sandwich. The problem, of course, is that what I actually need to make is a roasted chicken.

In other words, it's 2 minutes only if your problem is solvable with Xyz _and_ if you can actually understand that in the first place - and that's not a 2 minute task. So, as great as Docker looks, the "magic in 2 minutes" demos come across as gimmicky and do it more harm than good.

<comment><USER3> _> '...it's 2 minutes only if your problem is solvable with Xyz...'_

Isn't that self-evident?

It's a 'Hello World!' example for gaudi, not a guide, tutorial of even a quick start for gaudi much less Docker.

<comment><USER2> Then by the same extent

        main() { printf("Hello world!\n"); }

is a working native app in C that I built in just 5 seconds. How is it notable?

<comment><USER4> It's notable if you've never written a C program before, and have no idea what even a minimum valid program would look like.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, but that's _not_ how an average C program looks like, and the fact that I was able to cook this up in several seconds is absolutely meaningless at best and seriously misleading at worst.

<comment><USER5> The two have different scopes -- you guys aren't really comparing fairly here.

To someone who's never done it before, "building a working web application with 3 docker containers" \-- no matter what that application does or doesn't do -- might sound much harder than it is to _get started_.

Comparing a ham sandwich to a roasted chicken isn't at all appropriate here -- it's more like comparing a ham sandwich to a gourmet bistro sandwich, where, to a beginner, a ham sandwich is a great starting point, because he learns about the very basics and can expand from there.

The value isn't in the end product here; it's in the first steps toward _an_ end product and teaching people that it's not as befuddling as it might sound. It's not misleading and it's absolutely not meaningless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you are building a PHP/MySQL app, I'm not sure that I would start with docker. Actually, I know I wouldn't start with docker.

Very few apps will ever get to the point where they have millions of users, and even fewer will need to use docker to orchestrate what should amount to < 5 servers (1 proxy, 2 web fronts, 1 cache, 1 db) to start to handle that kind of load.

Once you are at that kind of scale, where you are handling 5+ containers/machines, then it might make sense to look at docker, chef, puppet, etc... but for the rest of us, starting with docker feels like premature optimization for scale that will likely never happen.

The only sensible part of docker at small scale is if you are inside a larger org and you are deploying a lot of apps and you are using docker to simplify deployment (sort of like WAR files in javaland...sort of), but even then for php/mysql a git checkout or rsync works like a champ.

<comment><USER7> The point of docker here is to make your dev environment the same as your production env as much as possible. If you develop on osx and deploy to linux sooner rather than later you will get bitten by env differences.

<comment><USER8> The biggest advantage of docker I've seen so far is Dokku [1]. If I want to get a dev-instance up and running to show to coworkers (or the client) I just can do "git remote add dokku firstname.lastname@example.com && git push dokku master" and share the link with them. And with very little modifications the same can be deployed at Heroku (though I don't use heroku personally).

And if you follow the dokku instructions it's fairly easy to setup, while doing something similar without Dokku but nginx/apache+php/passenger would take a fair amount of time to setup and config to run like that.

[1] [https://github.com/progrium/dokku](https://github.com/progrium/dokku)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The heavy-lifting of this seems to be [gaudi]([http://gaudi.io/](http://gaudi.io/)) "a way to describe a system of Docker containers using a simple DSL" and a drag-and-drop interface to generate a script.

gaudi seems to be the perfect tool for setting up database + applications + web containers, but has anyone used it in practice?

<comment><USER9> Looks like he is generating YAML for fig. Or his tool reads YAML that is just like fig's.

<comment><USER10> gaudi doesn't generate YAML for fig. DSLs are similar but the goal is not the same.

The difference between fig and gaudi is that in addition to fetch containers from Docker index or via custom Dockerfile gaudi will generate it's own Dockerfile (from templates).

All containers are started with the same base image and are more customizable than Docker index containers

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Docker reslly seems to gain a lot of momentum but there is still a need to mature the tooling around it, this looks like a great step in that direction.

Semi-related see also [http://blog.liip.ch/archive/2014/06/01/how-i-use- docker-on-o...](http://blog.liip.ch/archive/2014/06/01/how-i-use-docker-on- os-x.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> The music makes me feel like I'm curing cancer.</comment>


Israeli Covid-19 treatment shows 100% survival rate – preliminary data - <AUTHOR> https://www.jpost.com/HEALTH-SCIENCE/Israeli-COVID-19-treatment-shows-100-percent-survival-rate-preliminary-data-624058 <comment><USER2> And how carefully do they select their patients, so that they can maintain their perfect record?

</comment><comment><USER3> Very, very small sample size.

I wonder what it costs and if the treatment is scalable?</comment>


The road to automatic code visualization - <AUTHOR> http://blog.martijnbrekelmans.com/the-road-to-automatic-code-visualization/

<comment> 97-109-107 What about flow-based programming ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow- based_programming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow-based_programming))?</comment>


Apple laying groundwork for smart glasses - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-glasses-hints-from-wwdc-2019-2019-6#in-march-the-reliable-apple-analyst-ming-chi-kuo-said-apples-smart-glasses-would-be-mass-produced-in-the-middle-of-next-year-and-marketed-as-an-iphone-accessory-as-the-glasses-would-leverage-the-iphones-computing-and-networking-to-retain-a-lightweight-form-18 <comment><USER2> I wonder if they will use this tiny high def LED: [https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech- talk/semiconductors/optoelect...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech- talk/semiconductors/optoelectronics/this-microled-display-is-smaller-than-a- bug)

</comment><comment><USER3> identical submission posted 19 hours ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20160335](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20160335)

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_of_the_Killer_App](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_of_the_Killer_App)</comment>


The sad, inevitable fate of the Internet - <AUTHOR> It's starting to look like the Internet Everywhere will become a tightly government controlled, tightly government monitored network, without neutrality, with a small number of companies in primary control. That future if already here in many ways, and over time. Those trends will accelerate. Very sad. <comment> tony-allan "small number of companies in primary control" is how everything else works. Why do you expect the internet to be any different?

Look on the bright side — it's one day closer to large scale adoption of the distributed web...</comment>


Scientists 'strongly condemn' conspiracy theories about origin of coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/scientists-strongly-condemn-rumors-and-conspiracy-theories-about-origin-coronavirus <comment><USER2> > ... We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting > that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin. Scientists from multiple > countries have published and analysed genomes of the causative agent, severe > acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2),1 and they > overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife,2, 3, > 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 as have so many other emerging pathogens. ...

[https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736\(20\)30418-9/fulltext)

"does not have a natural origin" is an odd way of formulating the legitimate concerns I've seen.

From the original Nature article of 2017:

> But worries surround the Chinese lab, too. The SARS virus has escaped from > high-level containment facilities in Beijing multiple times, notes Richard > Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New > Jersey. Tim Trevan, founder of CHROME Biosafety and Biosecurity Consulting > in Damascus, Maryland, says that an open culture is important to keeping > BSL-4 labs safe, and he questions how easy this will be in China, where > society emphasizes hierarchy. "Diversity of viewpoint, flat structures where > everyone feels free to speak up and openness of information are important," > he says.

[https://www.nature.com/news/inside-the-chinese-lab-poised- to...](https://www.nature.com/news/inside-the-chinese-lab-poised-to-study- world-s-most-dangerous-pathogens-1.21487)

Those who have read the nature article and who have seen the Chinese government in action before around disease outbreaks have every right to raise questions around the curious opening of the Wuhan BL-4 facility so soon before the Coronavirus outbreak.</comment>


Autogenerate GraphQL API from MySQL/PostgreSQL Database with GraphQLize - <AUTHOR> https://blog.graphqleditor.com/graphqlize-instant-graphql-api-from-postgresql-mysql/ <comment><USER2> Looks interesting, well done. I'm using (and am extremely happy with) Hasura. Apart from supporting non Postgres dbs, what differentiates this?

<comment><USER3> I notice that Hasura does not support groupBy. And I don't like a blackbox service. I eventually built my own library: [https://github.com/charlie0077/graphql-server- crud/](https://github.com/charlie0077/graphql-server-crud/) I am curious to see your thoughts about it.</comment></comment>


QIRA is a timeless debugger - <AUTHOR> http://qira.me/ <comment><USER2> Regardless of what their README says, the current trunk has tons of bugs fixed. The release version does not work for me at all, but the trunk does.

</comment><comment><USER3> Switched release version to v1.2, https download and virtualenv Python package management.

Really need a good release engineer to come clean this up. Been a little busy with comma.ai :)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd be interested to see how this compares to gdb record (full and bts), been using that a bit lately

<comment><USER5> What QIRA is to GDB is what IDA is to objdump. The goal is to dramatically increase debugging productivity using a modern UI.

<comment><USER6> How about rr? // [http://rr-project.org/](http://rr-project.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is also [https://github.com/BinaryAnalysisPlatform/qira](https://github.com/BinaryAnalysisPlatform/qira) but geohot says 1.0 is better which is why he recommends using his site

<comment><USER5> That message is outdated, the trunk build is superior ATM. (I removed the message.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> By geohot

<comment><USER9> Wow. He workwd for Google, Project Zero. 2014. I missed that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Install

> Linux required, 64-bit Ubuntu recommended.

> cd ~/ && wget -qO- qira.me/dl | unxz | tar x && cd qira && ./install.sh

uhh... no

Seriously, if you want people to adopt your software, even on their development machines, please offer a safe way to get it.

<comment><USER11> There was previously a discussion of related issues here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6650987](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6650987)

At the end of the day you've got to trust someone even if you download a signed archive of source code. You can't audit every line.

<comment><USER12> You have to trust someone. You don't have to trust whoever is currently MitMing your Internet connection because the authors didn't bother to add HTTPS support.</comment></comment></comment>


Startup Country - <AUTHOR> http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/startup_country/ <comment><USER2> Deciding everything in advance like that (e.g. banning cash, which could turn out to break everything) is actually the big co way of doing things, not the startup way.

A real startup country would start out with few rules and a bunch of early adopter inhabitants, and they'd figure out what they should do incrementally in response to the inhabitants' needs. A lot like the early US in other words.

<comment><USER3> a lot like what they did in "Atlas Shrugged"

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately, that only worked because Galt personally selected a small and virtuous population (recall that Dagny actively tried not to become the beneficiary of govt subsidies early in the book). In the real world, I don't think it would be possible to keep rent seekers out.

<comment><USER5> In the real world, virtuous vs rent-seeking is most often a matter of timing: circumstances change, people change with them.

Any society based on constant philosophical adherence across the range of human circumstances can only work in fiction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One difficulty here, if the idea is to identify policies that should be adopted country-wide, is confounding factors. Say you ban cash, and also introduce a 1984-style police state, and lastly pay for education and health care for all citizens. Crime drops versus the rest of the country. Is it because you're living in a police state, or is it because people are well educated and healthy? This difficulty seems especially problematic when some top level entity is a priori choosing what the new policies will be, versus choosing them as reality indicates.

A better system might be to have a number of startup countries, let the people in them choose what laws they will or will not have, and also allow people to move easily between countries, so if the policies enacted in one turn out to suck, people can vote with their feet. And with a large number of countries to choose from, the ones with the best policies will tend to win out over the long term. Say to start, let's have fifty of them.

<comment><USER7> _And with a large number of countries to choose from, the ones with the best policies will tend to win out over the long term. Say to start, let's have fifty of them._

I don't get the feeling people _really_ move from state to state for the politics though. I would guess things like natural resources, weather, and historical accident play a bigger role.

I'm in California, apparently because Fredrick Terman encouraged a couple of his students to start a company here [1], and because the place has nice weather.

[1]: [http://www.slideshare.net/sblank/computer-history- museum-112...](http://www.slideshare.net/sblank/computer-history- museum-112008-presentation)

<comment><USER8> People absolutely do move between states for politics.

People who move directly for political reasons (taxes, regulations, etc.) are relatively small, but for instance I left California due to California firearms laws and taxes.

A lot of people move for second-order effects of politics -- there is more new business activity in Texas than in Louisiana, New Hampshire vs. Vermont, and in South Dakota than Minnesota, etc. due to government actions, and people move for those jobs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> An article in the Atlantic that was posted here "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ending Poverty" actually talks about this idea from the lens of international development. It dwells on the analogy with Hong Kong, and some city states in Mediaval Europe quite extensively. It's a thought provoking read, you should check it out here:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/07/the- politi...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/07/the-politically- incorrect-guide-to-ending-poverty/8134/)

HN discussion here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1426429>

</comment><comment><USER10> This seems to be similar to the article from last month's Atlantic Monthly about Paul Romer's plan to have developed countries run microstates similar to Hong Kong or Singapore in developing nations.

It was discussed at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1426429>

<comment><USER11> Also see <http://www.chartercities.org/> and <http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The "perfect and flawless"-model for running states has been _widely_ discredited. These models invariably makes sweeping assumptions about peoples priorities, which is very hard to do, given how surprisingly different people are. The resulting flood of compromises either leads to inefficient systems like the ones we have today, or totalitarian regimes (force people to share the assumed priorities).

The model of deciding on a few general core values and defending them rigourously (free speech, equality to the law, right of self determination etc.) leads to inefficient, yet stable and reasonably prosperous societies.

</comment><comment><USER13> See Patri Friedman's seasteading concept: a multitude of startup countries where political systems compete and innovate.

<http://seasteading.org/learn-more/intro>

</comment><comment><USER14> _"Campaign contributions would be eliminated because all campaigns would happen on the Internet so that running for office would cost next to nothing."_

I doubt it. Competition between better and worse campaigns would ensure that everyone running for office would still want the best campaign managers, and they would still pay through the nose for that. Just because media purchasing is thrown out the window doesn't mean there isn't room left for further (expensive) optimization.

In fact, any system with rules is going to have inefficiencies to be exploited. In this case, it seems like the biggest one is privacy. The most well off startup citizens are going to realize they want some privacy back, and will pay dearly for it (just as the wealthiest currently value their privacy so highly). This will create a market for elite "privacy engineers" (think ghost in the shell style), who will be the citizens most in demand.

<comment><USER15> Heh, that line stood out. Imagine: "Venture capital will be eliminated because more companies will be started on the Internet, where costs are next to nothing."

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Ah yes, the second system syndrome. _This_ time we'll get it right.

<comment><USER17> Going by history the third version doesn't work out too well either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Want to know the only difference between complicated and simple? Between a startup and Big Co? EDGE CASES -- Your startup (country) will be fine and perfect as long as you support the basic cases. It's when you start addressing the nuances, you'll get right back on the path of the parent country.

</comment><comment><USER19> You don't really need legislative government when you can vote laws directly (through the internet).

Interesting article.

However, there is a risk of bugs as in any code rewrite, don't you think?

<comment><USER12> I don't think removing the last shred of accountability from lawmakers while introducing even more populism is the right way to go.

<comment><USER20> Exactly - the great think about populism in the form of internet petitions is that the laws proposed don't actually have to work as intended and the proponents don't have the responsibility of dealing with the consequences

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Personally, I think this is the most horrific idea Scott has proposed in a long time. Police-state surveillance in my bedroom and bathroom?[1] No cash, meaning no possibility of discreet purchases? Only one option for banking?

This world of his would be lovely right up until humans started occupying it. But even the slightest bit of corruption would render it a nightmare.

[1] Actually, full surveillance everywhere EXCEPT in the home would be fine with me...as long as the data feeds are completely public.

</comment><comment><USER22> >The entire banking system would be automated. There would be no cash in the start-up country. You wouldn't need to "apply" for a loan because the virtual bank would always have a current notion of your credit-worthiness.

Am I the only one who is even slightly troubled by the fact that individuals could essentially be tracked in real time as a result of this technology? I mean the Stasi would have loved to have this level of information about their citizens' activities.

<comment><USER23> I know very little about cryptography, but it seems like it would be possible to construct a system where you authorize the bank to learn only those details of your credit history which are relevant to its decision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> i figured out a while back that the 2 main enablers of political corruption are (1) the allowing of privacy for politicians, and (2) allowing untracked economic transactions (cash handed over, etc.). If you could eliminate those two things it would be much harder for politicians to be corrupt. But it's easier contemplated than implemented, in part because we have inertia and power in the hands of people who would not allow it. Also, there is effectively no "unclaimed" land/sea in the world anymore upon which to start a new country. And in the US, at least, it is considered a high crime for anyone to band together and split off forming a new country (consider Lincoln and the US Civil War). You could still try to start a new country somewhere, but you'd probably need a lot of military power to defend it from existing countries, their puppet forces, and pirates.

To this day I still think it's amusing that we supposedly live in The Land of the Free (TM) but we can't "fork" a piece of the US off, even a tiny piece of it that we personally inhabit, and make a new country.

<comment><USER25> I think the main enabler of political corruption is politicians aren't paid enough. In the U.S, they oversee trillion dollar budgets yet are paid less than $100,000. It's a recipe for corruption. Politicians in Singapore pay themselves a few million dollars annually and Transparency international rates Singapore as the 3rd least corrupt country in the world.

<comment><USER26> While the U.S. salaries aren't millions of dollars, they're definitely over $100,000 these days, at least for federal office. Senators and Congressmen get $174,000/yr, Supreme Court Justices get $200,000, the Vice President gets $227,000, and the President gets $400,000. They all get very generous benefits, pension packages, and expense reimbursements as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> To me this illustrates one of the biggest weaknesses America has to BRIC. All of those countries have some form of an extraordinarily underregulated place within their borders as well as places with the money and efficiency of the US, and while these places allow for human rights violations, they also allow for extraordinary growth and innovation. They are able to get the best of both worlds.

The prime example is Rio, with it's slums right next door to giant skyscrapers. The slums act like incubators, and when innovation happens the cities eat it up. While the vast majority of the people trying to create businesses within the slums fail, the effects of the failures are absorbed back into the slums, while the cities scale the successes. This may keep the slums poor, but this juxtaposition (among many other factors) seems to be doing wonders for Brazil's economy.

<comment><USER28> >The slums act like incubators

Yeah. Sure. Keep telling yourself that. 1 in 3 people in Rio live in those slums. Even Rio's socialists want god "to step in and clean up this mess", because they view the slum inhabitants as less than human and deserving of their fate. The poverty there is so bad people break into houses of vacationing families and steal everything: copper pipe, kitchen sink, floorboard -- the freaking floorboards -- because they're useful in improving life in the slums.

My friend spent 4 months there, and had to travel through the slums almost daily. He's concluded that poverty -- real poverty like what he's witnessed with his own eyes -- doesn't exist in the U.S.

Here's a tip: Brazil's economy is doing well because it is not oil-dependent, it exports oil, it has no social safety net, and its doing whatever it can to attract foreign investment. The slums have nothing to do with, except as a refuge for those who are left behind by the economy.

<comment><USER29> The needless snarkiness ("Yeah. Sure. Keep telling yourself that...Here's a tip") detracts from this comment. It would be more persuasive without it, because when you include status-lowering attacks with your factual counter- arguments, your opponent can't agree with you without lowering zir status.

<comment><USER30> Sometimes people who are utterly, utterly clueless about how the other half lives need a wakeup call.

<comment><USER29> If a wakeup call drives a clueless person further into their clueless position, it's the last thing they need. What they need is a persuasive argument with an escape route where they can concede while losing minimal status.

It's difficult to see it from the other side. When we see a status attack favoring a position we agree with, it feels like a righteous smiting of the enemy. But it doesn't have the effect we intuitively think it does.

<comment><USER30> Sometimes, offensive comments need to be called out as offensive. Had the person been talking about, say, post-Katrina New Orleans as an "incubator for innovation" they'd be downmodded to oblivion.

<comment><USER29> I suppose I am assuming that the purpose of a discussion on HN is truth- seeking. If we are also enforcing social norms, then it makes sense to attack the status of those who propose offensive things.

Enforcing social norms must come at the expense of truth-seeking though, and I think truth-seeking is more important. Anyone can easily think of examples from history where offensive opinions turned out to be correct, and there are sure to be views today which are regarded as offensive and are also correct.

Paul Graham wrote about this in What You Can't Say: <http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html>

Edit: We have drifted from the original topic somewhat. The snarkiness I objected to wasn't calling out his opponent as offensive. It was just snarkiness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Startup countries are a great idea. Old governments are patched and repatched to meet each new wave of lobbyists.

Th key is not starting over but establishing mechanisms that require governments to compete and that enable customers to walk away if they aren't happy.

The US started out with 50 competitive states whose overall security was protected by a tiny federal government that did little more than manage the border and the currency. The states did everything else.

If you dislike your state, you just move to another one. WE need MORE of that. We need SMALLER states with more intense competition.

The naysayers will tell you its a crazy patchwork quilt. They want one set of rules, presumably for all human beings ultimately with no innovation or competition. The dream of all statists. They trumpet diversity in biology, but scorn it in human life.

<comment><USER32> Actually, didn't it start with 13 states?

<comment><USER33> Don't break his rosy dreams.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Might as well designate existing metropolitan areas as Startup Countries - less dislocation. There also would be a ready supply of lawyers eager to startup a new legal system as well.

Or perhaps do this around Western Nebraska where are some of the poorest counties in the USA.

</comment><comment><USER35> This sounds like a place that would not be fun to live or work in. Part of the vibrancy of cities and countries is that there is history and, yes, inefficiency.

</comment><comment><USER36> Similar in spirit to <http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer.html>

</comment><comment><USER37> Here's a nice book about, among other things, a similar country: <http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm></comment>


Defending Darwin - <AUTHOR> https://orionmagazine.org/article/defending-darwin

<comment><USER2> The author mentions that his last lesson is always about the social resistance to evolution, and how he points out that maintaining your religion doesn't require rejecting evolution.

This seems like something that should at least be touched on at the beginning, so anyone swayed by that point would be open to the information _while_ its being delivered, rather than after finishing the course.

But sounds like that might require re-animating Pope John Paul II to come present. :-)</comment>


Ask HN: How much do you spend on WordPress plugins? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I do a lot of Wordpress development for clients. I've spent more on themes (between $30 - $80 per theme, usually closer to $40) than I have on plugins, and the themes often include functionality I'm looking for that I might otherwise use free plugins to create in a theme I'd build myself.

So far the main plugin I've spent money on is Advanced Custom Fields, purchasing the repeater field and options page add-ons. Cost around $40 USD I believe. Gives me a license to use those add-ons on as many client sites as I want.

I've also had clients purchase WooCommerce extensions like the PayPal Pro gateway ($79) and Stripe extension ($79).

Also, as I continue to build out [http://BostonStartupsGuide.com](http://BostonStartupsGuide.com), I expect I'll purchase SearchWP ($25) and Events Calendar Pro ($65).

</comment><comment><USER3> So far I haven't seen the need to spend anything on WordPress plugins.

</comment><comment><USER4> Have a developer's license for Gravity Forms and BackupBuddy and install those on pretty much every site.

If it's some small bit of functionality I will try to write it myself or do some creative copy/pasting. Most plugins are bloated with a lot of extra unnecessary stuff.

</comment><comment><USER5> None. If I don't find one I like that I can use for free I write my own.

<shameless-self-promotion>

[http://wordpress.org/plugins/kennethrapp](http://wordpress.org/plugins/kennethrapp)

</shameless-self-promotion>

</comment><comment><USER6> Typically nothing, one client wanted Gravity Forms so I purchased that for his site recently. Maybe a few WooCommerce plugin extensions, but that's about it.

</comment><comment><USER7> $0.00 so far. Haven't found a need to.

</comment><comment><USER8> I haven't spend anything as well.</comment>


NASA scientist finds evidence of alien life - <AUTHOR> http://www.digitaltrends.com/international/nasa-scientist-finds-evidence-of-alien-life/

<comment><USER2> _"Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying."_ \- Arthur C. Clarke

</comment><comment><USER3> The fact that this came through FoxNews kills all credibility for me

<comment><USER4> To my memory, all of Fox News' bogus stuff is directly related to one thing: partisanship. I can't think of any lie or mistake they've published that would make me doubt the legitimacy of this article.

<comment><USER5> They lie, or publish unverified pap, whenever it suits their agenda.

I have no specific knowledge regarding whether, or how, this news article might fit their agenda,

Clearly in this situation it is appropriate to assume that they are lying, or at the very least publishing unverified pap, and to wait for evidence that may indicate they are not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If I got a dime for every time NASA scientist has found alien life...</comment>


Extensible CSS - the most basic things your site's css/html should support - <AUTHOR> http://cameronmoll.com/archives/2008/04/extensible_css_interface_testing_extensibility/

<comment><USER2> Cameron's point regarding designing for a color blind audience is extremely valuable. Such an easy thing to overlook.</comment>


Lee Smolin on the nature of time - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencefocus.com/feature/black-holes/incredible-truth-about-time <comment><USER2> For anyone who hasn't come across Lee Smolin, he's one of the most articulate critics of String Theory (or the family of theories that fit vaguely under that banner).

I thoroughly recommend reading his book "The Trouble With Physics", where he shares some (from my perspective) great insights on some of the mis-steps the Physics community has taken over the past 30-40 years.

<comment><USER3> To add to this, I thoroughly recommend reading Smolin's paper on the "limited, and hence reasonable, effectiveness of mathematics in physics." He expands on one of those mis-steps (quoting from the paper):

>This is in contradiction with the Platonic view of mathematics held by many physicists and mathematicians according to which, mathematical truths are facts about mathematical objects which exist in a separate, timeless realm of reality, which exists apart from and in addition to physical reality

[http://arxiv.org/abs/1506.03733](http://arxiv.org/abs/1506.03733)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It seems like Smolin's ideas about conceptualizing "time" outside of equations is similar to Bergson's.[1] However, Bergson was a philosopher instead of a physicist. Maybe Smolin's scientific background will add more to the perspective.

Einstein thought that since the physics equations didn't endow 't' any profound qualities in relation to other dimensions, "time" was an illusion.

Bergson was saying that "time" that we _experience_ is something that's not fully captured by equations. He did not disagree with the physics equations predictive power. Nevertheless, physicists criticized Bergson for not understanding physics. Bergson criticized the physicists for letting the equations' practical success dictate the reality/illusion of "time".

It seems like both sides were talking past each other.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Physicist-Philosopher-Einstein- Bergson...](http://www.amazon.com/Physicist-Philosopher-Einstein-Bergson- Understanding/dp/0691165343)</comment>


Ask HN: What are your side projects? - <AUTHOR> Hey all,
My name is Kevin and I write for BostInnovation, a Boston-based innovation publication.
I am organizing a piece about interesting side projects.
If you are currently working on a side project and would like to be consider for inclusion in the piece, please leave a brief description of your side project(s), a link (if you have one) as well as the best method to contact you if follow-up is required.
Thanks!
EDIT: here is the URL to BostInnovation:  http://bostinnovation.com/.  Here is the URL to our programming section:  http://bostinnovation.com/tag/programming/
EDIT (x2): I loosely define a side project as something you work on but you do not spend most of your time doing so.  The focus of the side project is of no concern to me just yet.  If there is a way to group the responses by type of side project, I will probably do so in subsequent pieces. (ex, "Gaming-based side projects" or "Javascript-based side projects".) <comment><USER3> This is probably OT, but I want to share: my side project this time is something completely different. I choose to stop writing code in my spare time and instead do something else.

My special side project is to finish the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc in 2012.

I never ran before. I started my training the end of summer 2010, and I am really positive about making it by next year :)

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

<comment><USER4> Absolutely awesome. Have fun!

In a similar vein, I'm riding my bike across Canada this summer: <http://bybike.ca/>

<comment><USER3> A lot of fun to you as well!

I am sure you will collect a lot of wonderful memories on that bike tour.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Lately I've been writing a client for TeleHash, a protocol which provides addressing, subscription and NAT traversal for p2p apps. The protocol itself is still being fleshed out and the existing clients are only prototypes so I'm aiming to create a solid reference client and test suite.

<https://github.com/jamii/erl-telehash>

[http://scattered- thoughts.net/all?tag=telehash&abridge=t...](http://scattered- thoughts.net/all?tag=telehash&abridge=true)

<http://telehash.org>

TeleHash was originally created for use in the Locker project, which I also contribute to. Locker gathers data from all manner of services and websites (gmail, IMAP, XMPP, facebook, wordpress, twitter etc) and stores it on your own machine so you can access all your data from a uniform interface without having to trust an external site. In the future Locker will expand this with apps providing search, visualization and data mining.

<https://github.com/quartzjer/Locker>

[http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/02/singly-locker-project- teleh...](http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/02/singly-locker-project- telehash.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> My latest side project is <http://laserey.es>, a webapp that you drag photo's onto, finds your eyes and draws lasers from them. There's an email and twitter on that site for contact :)

<comment><USER7> still loving this project. both my FB and Twitter account have laser eyes.

<comment><USER6> Thanks :) I have so many things I still want to add! Alas, the time for side projects is always limited.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have a daily email "learn something new every day" newsletter, at <http://dlewis.net/nik> \-- facts like carrot used to be purple, Abraham Lincoln created the Secret Service on the day he was shot, there's an island of hyper-poisonous snakes off the coast of Brazil.

4,000 subscribers. Contact info off the URL :)

<comment><USER9> This newsletter is fantastic. I heard about it a few weeks ago and have passed it on to many friends who are also enjoying it. Highly recommended.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Kevin, you should probably search HN for "rate" (from "rate my ...") and for "show" (from "Show HN: ...") to discover recent projects. Also, if you could be a bit more clear on _your_ definition of "side project" versus front, back, top, bottom or any other type of project, it might prove helpful (i.e. are you looking for startup projects? hobby projects? ...).

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks jcr, will do.

As opposed to a front project or a back project, a side project is one that someone works on outside of their main job/project. A main job/project is one that someone puts most of their time into.

Does this help?

<comment><USER10> Not really. I should have been more clear rather than try to be humorous. With a name like BostInnovation (and no url for your site?), it makes me wonder what kinds of innovations you're looking for?

Some of the people working on "projects" here on HN do it full time (in addition to doing other full time / paid work), and what they are doing _is_ innovative. Some of the good stuff may not quite qualify as a "side project," well, at least it might not in the eyes of the people doing them.

<comment><AUTHOR> good points, jcr. check my edits on the original post

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In my spare time, I'm working on a game library for Processing that I call Laser Sea Destruction ( <http://abielinski.com/lsd> ). It's got some fancy features I wish Processing had by default. It's still in development, so there's only 1 working demo, and you have to download the package to see it.

Email is in profile :)

</comment><comment><USER12> I released this iPhone app few months ago - JustRemindIt - <http://justremindit.com>. It's an app to send voice call based reminders to your friends, clients and yourself. Just type the reminder message and date, and our service will call a desired person at a scheduled time.

Many businesses and individuals use this app on daily basis. The iPhone app already makes decent money, but I'm more excited about the upcoming Web application, which is specially targeted for small service and professional businesses. I'll be releasing this web app very soon.

This is my first side project, which solves a real problem, makes decent money, and growing slowly but steadily. You can reach me at aditya at justremindit dot com.

</comment><comment><USER13> I am starting a UX newsletter at <http://www.uxready.com/> . Currently, I am collecting feedback from friends on what kind of news they'd like to receive. Once the subscribed number reaches 100 I will start sending it.

<comment><USER14> Signed up. I'd like to see interesting content on data-driven design (split testing etc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> 1\. A Business Intelligence/Data Warehouse that sits on top of all of my gmail data.

2\. A utility that turns a spreadsheet into a web app.

3\. An app that turns my Hacker News comments into an ebook.

4\. A bridge hand dissector that helps intermediate players become expert players.

<comment><USER16> > A bridge hand dissector that helps intermediate players become expert > players.

Do you know Fred Gitelman, the creator of Bridge Base? If not and you'd like an introduction, please ping me.

<comment><USER15> I don't know him, and I may take you up on your offer. Thanks, raganwald.

I loved this excerpt from his wikipedia entry:

"Gitelman is sometimes recognized for his creativity at the bridge table. In one tournament he discarded an Ace, as a signal to his partner to not lead that suit. His partner didn't, but led the remaining logical suit which Gitelman, being void, ruffed."

If that had been written about me, it probably would have been more like:

"edw519 is sometimes recognized for his lack of patience at the bridge table. In one tournament he discarded an Ace, as a signal to his partner to not lead that suit. When his partner led that suit anyway, edw519 threw his cards at him and was 86'ed from the tournament for life."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hooray for Boston! As another commenter said, it's nice to see some Boston action. I moved here in July and am loving the start-up scene here.

I released Zen To Done App last fall (<http://zentodoneapp.com>), which is a to-do list manager based on Leo Babauta's Zen To Done. It's a simple app that allows you to define a few major tasks for the week and then fit in all the little tasks around them.

Also working on a wine management system that my father wants but no link for that...yet.

Email is in profile.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm building something of a portfolio project in my spare time. Something to show to potential employers and myself that I have the ability to make a robust web application.

It is called <http://www.selfcompete.com> and, even though I'm doing it as a learning experience, I think it has the potential that it could gain some users because it's a lot of fun to use. It is a web app that provides a way to measure (and kind of brag about) your personal bests. I wrote up a blog post explaining a little more of the idea behind it : <http://dashdingo.org/post/4273080092/what-is-self-compete>

You can contact me through the email address in my profile or twitter, where I have the same username.

</comment><comment><USER19> 1\. Gourmaide - <http://www.gourmaide.com> \- iPad recipe app that aims to be different by rethinking the way recipes are presented in the tablet era.

2\. The Daily Dealist - <http://www.thedailydealist.com> \- A social deal aggregator site that's gaining some early traction.

3\. Bouncy Tags - <http://www.bouncytags.com> \- Some would say it's from a bygone era of start pages but I find it quite helpful. Add bookmarks by tags and access them from anywhere (even mobile). Links that you use more frequently gain prominence over time. Use invite code "letmein" here: <http://www.bouncytags.com/signup>

</comment><comment><USER20> private.txt <http://privacytxt.org> Mostly it's me trying to get people to adopt this. =) Completely aware their is a W3 standard that tried to accomplish, somewhat, what privacy.txt is trying to do.

4jc.in <http://4jc.in> My person code deployment site. Mostly for web side stuff like JavaScript and CSS that I regularly use.

DuctMail <http://ductmail.com> Email reminder system that is simple to use. Again, created to scratch a personal itch.

The Wish Cloud <http://thewishcloud.com> Basically, everything you never knew you wanted. Socialized wish lists. Still a long way to go on this one, but making progress.

<comment><USER21> Here's a screenshot of <http://privacytxt.org> from my Firefox 4 on Linux: <http://i.imgur.com/awcJy.png>

<comment><USER20> <http://i.imgur.com/wqka8.png>

That's what I see on mine (FF4 on Linux as well), so I really have no clue why it's exploding like that for you. Sorry =(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> <http://takeastand.com.ng/>

It is aimed at getting people to PUBLICLY state their position in the forthcoming Nigerian elections and know the position friends have taken.

It can be applied to other issues. e.g referendums af any kind.

my email is in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER23> 1\. OISC VM - A "One Instruction Set CPU" virtual machine and assembler. - <http://simonpstevens.com/projects/oiscvm>

2\. Web Gallery Processor - An ASP.Net MVC project that builds image galleries from folders of images - <http://simonpstevens.com/Projects/WebGalleryProcessor>

3\. Ph-Air Hockey - An air hockey game for Windows Phone 7 - <http://simonpstevens.com/Projects/PhAirHockey>

\+ some other smaller stuff from time to time - <http://simonpstevens.com/projects>

<comment><USER24> Regarding #1, I wrote an implementation of that in BASH back at uni in 2003 <http://mishima.warwickcompsoc.co.uk/sopl_stripped.sh>

It's ancient code now, but I'm still proud of it - and reminising over this was how my girlfriend and I got together!

<comment><USER23> It's just a really interesting concept I think. Every now and then I start trying to read enough hardware stuff to build a real one. Never actually get anything built though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Working on a Kindle and Nook ebook lending site in my spare time: <http://www.booklends.com>

Unfortunately nobody can log in today, as I'm making a few changes following a sternly worded letter from Amazon ;-)

</comment><comment><USER26> Hi, my side project is a simple and useful mobile application.

Let's meet Dawg, your new friend. Simple application making social life easier than ever before. Now you can seamlessly connect your social life at Facebook and Twitter in one place. Get updates on the go, and glance over them - <USER2> if you get disconnected from the Internet! .Dawg helps you stay social with your tweets, updates, photos and videos in a single application. Let's gear up to explore your social network easy way with Dawg.

Currently available for android , try it today <http://bit.ly/gakCmT> and give your valuable feedback.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm currently working on a clone of an SNES game from 1995: <https://github.com/sharpobject/panel-attack>

This probably isn't the kind of project you're looking for though ;(

</comment><comment><USER28> I created <http://fuelog.com> a couple few years ago to (to steal jasonlotito's phrase) scratch a personal itch.

I had a dumb phone (razr) for way too long and wanted to be able to log gas station fill-ups via SMS. When I was introduced to Twitter, I realized the natural connection and built the site.

It took a lot longer to build than expected, but I'm really glad I followed through from concept to publicly-available site. I haven't touched it in at least a year, so I'm pretty sure the Twitter API is broken. If I had it to do over again, I'd have used GAE (python) instead of raw PHP.

</comment><comment><USER29> My side-project is a job search engine that works by crawling company websites to build up the job database. In addition to letting people do the standard search based on keywords, I've also added the ability to filter job search results with other meaningful metrics like: the size of the company, companies that have won employer awards (eg. Best Places to Work), restricting the job search to only .edu, .net, .com sites, etc.

The site is at <http://www.neekanee.com>

My email is in my profile.

<comment><USER30> Warning: PDOStatement::execute() [pdostatement.execute]: SQLSTATE[HY093]: Invalid parameter number: no parameters were bound in /home/thayton/webapps/htdocs/common.php on line 298

<comment><USER29> Yeah, it's still pretty rough right now but I still thought I'd mention it. Put in the state (NY in your case) along with the city and you'll get back the results you were looking for. Or, just hit search with no location specified and you can drill down by state/city/company/job-listing

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm a college student, but I've been intermittently working on a couple of HTML5 games.

One is a simple version of the puzzle game Sokoban. <http://sokobanjs.com>.

The other is a bit unusual, it's sort of an interactive chatroom plus level editor, inspired by the DOS games ZZT and Megazeux. Still in very early stages. Here's a screenshot: <http://i.imgur.com/pjdR9.png>

I live in Northampton, MA, though I visit Boston frequently. My e-mail is in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER32> Working on a project that attempts to integrate e-commerce sales with content in the same sort of way that comic books used to sell novelty items in the back pages. <http://humanminute.com/> Store portion at <http://humanminute.com/store> and <http://humanminute.com/store/grid>

Currently a rather failed project but still kicking around ideas.

</comment><comment><USER33> A structured todo app for startup/business/management guys to have only limited number of tasks occupying mindshare at a moment. This is to prevent the OMG-what-do-I-do-next-to-grow-my-startup feeling while starting the day. It categorizes tasks broadly into: getting more customers, retaining existing customers and making sure company stuff is taken care of (hiring, raising funding, office, meals, holidays, etc.)

Needless to say, it is my most used app now (yep, I use it even more than VWO :)

</comment><comment><USER34> I have built two sites so far as side projects to learn Django/Python, the first one I started is <http://hatzillion.com> a place to buy hats. I have some python scripts that run daily to get the latest deals on hats from different web sites (only 3 for now, more to come). The second project is <http://10ThingsAbout.me> inspired by a post on this site about threewords.me.

</comment><comment><USER35> In my free time I've been fixing up some code for the in-house music management/playback software at my alma mater's radio station. (plug: Song selection is controllable by website visitors, <http://wvtc.net> ). Though I'm probably going to leave that project to the current students once I finish the bit I'm on right now (I felt I should replace this part for them, its some bad perl I wrote as a sophomore).

Contact info is in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER36> <https://market.android.com/details?id=com.zemariamm.wicked>

An Android app to help you find cool new music (uses several APIs: EchoNest, SoundCloud and others)

<http://www.directball.com>

An Android and iPhone app that streams videos from football games

<http://apps.facebook.com/itooner>

A Facebook app to create comic strips from funny situations :D

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm really excited about html5 & javascript for game development. My current game and learning project is "Last Man Standing: A Zombie Apocalypse"

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/165110/lastmanstanding/index.html>

Accelerometerated (iOS 4.2+) (my favourite version)

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/165110/lmsazpa/index.html>

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm currently working on a custom written Photoblog hashed out in PHP using the Codeigniter framework. Photography is a just a hobby of mine and I refuse to use services like Flickr to share photos; for some reason it just don't sit right with me.

I've also been working on a website that indexes and categorizes usenet NZB files.

Both projects haven't been launched and are currently at a standstill because of wedding planning. :)

Sorry I couldn't have been more help.

</comment><comment><USER39> A flash card wiki. very early stage, for now it helps my daughter learn to write her french verbs. <http://jfno-questions.appspot.com/> A hotel locator, booking directly on the maps. Mature and not developing anymore, maintenance is a 1 hour a month thing max. <http://www.seeyourhotel.com>

contact in my HN profile

</comment><comment><USER40> Hi Kevin! You already know about this one since you're a subscriber :), but would love to have my side project Hacker Newsletter (<http://www.hackernewsletter.com>) included. Also, I make a point of collecting the best side-projects each week in a specific section of the newsletter so if you look through the archives you will find a lot more.

<comment><USER41> At first, I didn't notice the larger part of the page is an image and was rather confused. I think you should make that more prominent.

<comment><USER40> Thanks for the feedback and will do. I'm currently doing some a/b testing on the design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> A little site to help university/high school students speculate what they need on exams to get a certain grade in the course, or vice versa: <http://calcmymarks.appspot.com/>

Really just a hobby, something created out of my nervousness when preparing for exams, but I've gotten some good usage from people at my university.

<comment><USER43> Have you checked out the iPhone app, Grades 2? Same concept but a lot more powerful in terms of the other features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I have had one of mine up for a little while now.

Faveone - <http://faveone.com> \- A this or that site which is fun to waste some time on :)

My other side project I have been hacking at for a while now is Had That Beer, <http://www.hadthatbeer.com> It is a beer check list app

Not up yet, but it is getting there :)

</comment><comment><USER45> <http://mogade.com> provides free services for game developers (leaderboard, achievements...) Wrote it largely because I believe in gaming, and I wanted something real to push my knowledge of Rails.

Been a little sidetracked with work on mongly.com lately and a few other things, but I still consider mogade.com my main project.

email in profile

</comment><comment><USER46> I've been working on GobiCab, a super easy way to find someone to share a cab with, on the side for a few months. It's actually homegrown here in Boston and we're working on partnerships with Logan airport and the City of Boston to help with distribution.

You can learn more here: <http://www.gobicab.com>

</comment><comment><USER47> I run an all volunteer, international response search and rescue team on the side. Http://www.1srg.org. Dkovar at gmail

</comment><comment><USER48> Just released mine not long ago, it's an interactive video library using HTML5 video and canvases:

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

Realized my main projects are taking all my time so I finally put it out minus much of a launch just so it's public and open for others to use :)

You can contact me at john.luxford at gmail.

</comment><comment><USER49> A social bookmarking site, with Twitter's follow model and auto-tagging search: <http://imi-imi.appspot.com/>

An Omegle / Chat Roulette clone, but that works over Google Talk: <http://social-butterfly.appspot.com/>

</comment><comment><USER50> <http://www.tweethit.com> => Tracks the most popular products on Twitter

And the library that came into light while developing TweetHit => <https://github.com/ocanbascil/Performance-AppEngine>

</comment><comment><USER51> I'm experimenting with a sort of personal "infopanel" as a side project.

The idea is to gather your bookmarks, notes and todos in one place in a drag and drop panel.

<http://trackpanel.net>

It's still quite rough and unfinished though, and I'm not sure if this is the best way of organizing this sort of data.

</comment><comment><USER52> I'm more of a data science wanna be than a developer, so I tend to analyze data. It's a lot of screen scraping, data munging, statistical modeling, and data visualization.

I'm always looking for data to analyze, to shoot me an email if you need something.

I'd like to get into GUI development and am working on learning that at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER53> Markdown mixtape creator using pastie sites So far just tinypaste...

<http://tinypaste.com/f13a1a> -> <http://texttape.heroku.com/f13a1a>

Mainly because I love netlabels but.. Protip: don't forget your dropbox..

</comment><comment><USER54> Full time undergrad student.

Side projects: <http://seizethedayapp.com> \- simple to-do iPhone app with reminders <http://hackerfollow.com> \- "Twitterizes" Hacker News, allowing you to follow users

<comment><USER55> The to-do app looks cool but $3.99? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> <http://socialcens.us> is a side project I've been working on a little. It is a pretty simple app that aggregates a bunch of data from all of your facebook friends and gives you a nice report. Also, a nice excuse to use Mongodb.

<comment><USER57> Very cool, I've been thinking of doing something similar. Mix this with ThinkUp and it could be quite a nice tool.

<comment><USER56> Thanks! That's an interesting idea, I'll have play around with ThinkUp a little bit and figure out how they can be integrated together

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I'm a full-time applied math student and tutor, but in my spare time I work on <http://www.getachiever.com>. I've wanted to build a service and business for a few years but only started work about a year ago.

</comment><comment><USER59> Django Weekly. It's a newsletter with interesting Django articles, code, and job vacancies. It grew explosively in the first few weeks in January, but the growth has levelled off at around +10 signups/week.

<http://djangoweek.ly/>

</comment><comment><USER60> This is my technology side-project: the ongoing work with servers, software, design, writing, and learning to keep Fight Aging! and its mailing list running as a one-person operation:

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

</comment><comment><USER61> <http://popify.me> for creating coupons for websites and social networks. It's also a great tool for measuring users curiosity. We have some more in the oven, but focusing mostly on the main thingg.

</comment><comment><USER62> Do we have to be based in Boston?

<comment><AUTHOR> nope

<comment><USER62> Okay, cool. My side project is Curious Reef: Exploratory social learning: <http://curiousreef.com/>

The most active class right now is this one: [http://curiousreef.com/class/mit- opencourseware-600-introduc...](http://curiousreef.com/class/mit- opencourseware-600-introduction/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> <http://dropdo.com> \- a file uploader/viewer that aims to let people view your file right on the web without having to download it and open it up in a dedicated program.

Best method of contact: email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER14> Currently creating an FP PHP framework for my own projects, designed for performance over everything else.

Also just finishing up a CSS framework for adaptive screen resolutions, including the ability to show/hide elements based on particular resolutions.

</comment><comment><USER64> Just launched this with a friend <http://www.tradetools.me> it's a simple little service to allow developers to share their computer setup and the tools they use on their machine.

</comment><comment><USER65> Currently my side project is taking two college classes at night. While it won't make me rich in the short term, I know it will pay off in the future.

I'm only able to do two classes at the moment since I work 50+ hrs a week in the office.

</comment><comment><USER66> I run a consulting company, on the side Im working on www.triviatise.com which is a platform which helps advertisers get users to remember their message by giving away prizes when users answer questions about the message.

</comment><comment><USER67> I built <http://urlminder.appspot.com> as a way of tracking the dozens on domain names I have between work and other side projects. My email is in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER68> <http://openpoll.us> is a platform that will allow people to vote and comment on state and federal legislation. It will launch some time this summer.

</comment><comment><USER69> I've been working on niche ecommerce sites. It seems like an interesting area. If you can get 10,000 visits a month who are highly targeted you should in theory be able to make decent revenue.

<comment><USER70> Interesting. I have been doing something similar with services with excellent results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Analytics for academic library proxy servers allowing libraries to determine what resources their patrons are using even if the publisher does not provide that data.

For what it's worth, I'm in Boston too.

</comment><comment><USER72> My side project is <http://freeciv.net> \- a HTML5 web based strategy game. Contact information in Hacker News profile.

</comment><comment><USER73> Working on a startup job aggregator that crawls curated startup job pages. <http://www.startupshiring.com>

</comment><comment><USER74> One of my side projects is <http://7courses.com> a dead simple recipe manager to replace traditional recipe boxes.

</comment><comment><USER75> My current side project is an online homebrewing beer log with recipe sharing. <http://ibrewedit.com/>

<comment><USER76> Very cool. I'm similarly working on homebrewr.com (nothing there now) -- more focus on the tools to build recipes and track brews.

<comment><USER75> Thanks! I've been working on it for a few months now. I'm hoping to have an open alpha to a handful of people by the end of April.

Best of luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> We've made <http://www.prdct.io> as a side project, where you can predict the future.

</comment><comment><USER78> Working on a list/ranking creation/curation project -- <http://www.rankoro.us/>.

</comment><comment><USER79> Javascript-based side project <http://instamapsearch.com>

</comment><comment><USER80> <http://rrrewind.com> a wayback machine for collective trends.

<comment><USER81> Very cool - I'm working on a similar project showing current trending content: <http://trendn.com>

<comment><USER80> Trendn is also cool. How do yo determine what is trending?

<comment><USER81> Thanks! Still a work in progress but the scoring is based on social sharing data as well as how long ago it was determined to be trending. Social sharing data includes facebook (likes, comments, shares), tweets including the URL, diggs, votes on reddit, delicious bookmarks, HN (points, comments), and a few other metrics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> Currently working on a lispy python dialect (python-compatible, with lispy macros). Will be published soon.

</comment><comment><USER83> Everything on <https://zetabee.com> is my side-project.

</comment><comment><USER84> <http://showbomber.com>

A youtube/nyc concert listing mash-up site.

</comment><comment><USER85> <https://github.com/wsxiaoys/carc/>

</comment><comment><USER86> I work on: <http://pepbot.com>

It's an intelligent temp mail provider

</comment><comment><USER87> I am actually looking for a good new project. I have been learning Python/Django and I love it.

<comment><USER88> Take a look at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2358871> TLDR: Write a platform where developers with running but under-advertized sites team up with marketing folks and share the profits.

If you do, please let me know :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> A search engine and bookmark system for HN - I've been learning about search engines lately.

</comment><comment><USER90> Developing a site for problem solving games.

Best method: send email to firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER91> As someone who lives in Boston, Cool site! (its always so frustrating that San Francisco gets all the cool things haha)

I while ago I wrote a web app for keeping track of the items in your kitchen. I also wrote a web crawler/search algorithm for matching recipes to those items. It worked great, but I found the process of adding items to your inventory was tedious so i put it down for a few months.

Recently I picked it back up, and I'm now solving the problem by developing an android (if it works there will be an iphone client too) client. The goal is to have users take a picture of the item, which will automatically be uploaded, and a description will be found through machine intelligence. Thanks to (<http://www.iqengines.com/>) who just let me into their alpha, I have a lot of confidence this is going to solve the issue!

</comment><comment><USER92> To see all these people doing all sorts of creative stuff here brings figurative tears to my eyes :) . Here's my humble contribution:

\- <http://projectilo.com/> A project sharing site

\- <http://askaround.me/> A local Q&A

\- <http://pubcentral.net/> For scientific publications

\- <http://igni.gr/> Classifieds

\- <http://mapifier.com/> Local directory & q&a

My main job is facebook apps.

</comment><comment><USER93> I'm going to build a bulk Whois service that responds in well structured JSON to privately license to people. I'm working on another project that needs access to that data so I need to build it anyways, and I'm sure a dozen or two people would like access as well.

I'm planning on using Sinatra and Redis for it too, so yay.

</comment><comment><USER94> bash-modules - various additional modules for bash: <http://trac.assembla.com/bash-modules/>

image segmentation - put your coins, stamps, labels on contrast background (orange, turquoise, etc.), scan it, then let script to remove background and extract each image: <http://vlisivka.pp.ua/uk/node/76>

SPM (source package manager) - meta-meta-programming system, with goal to automatically create and keep up to date large and complex programming systems.

(no name) - complex ajax apps which are independent from back-end, e.g. same AJAX frontend works fine without backend (with sample data), or with couchdb, PHP, java, perl, javascript, etc. backends. (evently + couchapp)

etc.

</comment><comment><USER95> <http://hockeybias.com>

It is a curated hockey news site with a UI similar to the Drudge Report and with archiving similar to Dave Winer's Scripting News. Love any feedback!</comment>


Microsoft finally unveils browser-based Office apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/10/28/44NF-microsoft-office-web_1.html

<comment><USER2> Nop, not using them.

Remember PlayNotSure and how people got screwed?

Can't trust them...</comment>