Modern SAT solvers: fast, neat and underused - <AUTHOR> https://codingnest.com/modern-sat-solvers-fast-neat-underused-part-1-of-n/ <comment><USER2> Yes! SAT solvers are an amazing secret weapon for solving tricky problems. I've been collecting some fun examples of solver-aided programming here: [https://github.com/kach/recreational- rosette](https://github.com/kach/recreational-rosette) (also, not in that repo, but still interesting: [https://github.com/kach/tower-of- power](https://github.com/kach/tower-of-power)).

</comment><comment><USER3> I wanted to mention Z3, which is one of the most user friendly yet advanced solvers I know. It's actually an SMT solver, so can solve a few more things than only SAT problems.

<comment><USER4> As cool as Z3 is, I wish it didn't become so incredibly slow once soft constraints are introduced. I guess it's inevitable to an extent...

<comment><USER5> What are soft constraints?

<comment><USER6> Hard constraints are constraints that cannot be violated for the allocation to be valid (i.e.: to be a solution).

Soft constraints are constraints that incur some cost/penalty when violated.

Then the problem objective changes from "find an allocation that is a solution" (SAT) to "find the minimal cost solution (if one exists)" (Weighted SAT / Constraint Optimization).

For instance:

\- SAT problem (a,b are binary):

Hard constraint: a = b

Solutions: a=0,b=0 and a=1,b=1

\- Constraint optimization:

Hard constraint: a = b

Soft constraint: cost(a,b) = a+b

Optimal solution: a=0,b=0 with cost 0. The allocation a=1,b=1 is a solution because it fulfills the hard constraints, but it is not optimal because it's cost (2) is larger than the cost of another solution (0).

<comment><USER7> Looks like you want to integrate a SAT/SMT solver with a convex optimisation engine :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A great related article is the introduction to PubGrub, the new solver algorithm for Dart's package manager. I especially liked the focus on better error messages, which can get pretty cryptic in other package managers.

[https://medium.com/@nex3/pubgrub-2fb6470504f](https://medium.com/@nex3/pubgrub-2fb6470504f)

The official docs are a rare learning resource, but require a bit more time to digest.

[https://github.com/dart- lang/pub/blob/master/doc/solver.md](https://github.com/dart- lang/pub/blob/master/doc/solver.md)

</comment><comment><USER9> Yup, had some great success getting solutions to real instances of NP complete problems. Nice thing is that SAT solvers all have basically the same interfaces, you can serialize the problems easily so it is super easy to try lots of solvers out. It's fun to think about problems in terms of SAT, you can build huge logic networks with hundreds of thousands of clauses and solve them in seconds. Solve integer optimizations with binary encodings. cool stuff. Unfortunately, it is super sensitive and hard to control, so if you want particular properties of your answer that are "nice to haves" but not required, it is hard to encode. Some problems will be solved instantly, some will never be solved with any amount of cpu time, so it is hard to have it in the loop of something that needs to always work unless your problems are really well constrained.

<comment><USER10> It sounds like you are trying to solve a partial maxsat problem. Partial maxsat uses two sets of clauses, hard and soft clauses. The hard clauses must be satisfied and the soft clauses are "nice to haves." The goal for the solver is to satisfy all the hard clauses and as many as the soft clauses as possible.

Pysat is a python package for that provides efficient SAT solver APIs and encodings, including a partial maxsat solver. [https://pysathq.github.io/docs/html/index.html](https://pysathq.github.io/docs/html/index.html)

RC2 partial maxsat algorithm: [https://pysathq.github.io/docs/html/api/examples/rc2.html](https://pysathq.github.io/docs/html/api/examples/rc2.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Definitely agree that they are criminally underused. I used to work for a large virtualization company, and used a SAT solver to walk an extremely complex dependency graph. We had originally been using a simple hill climbing algorithm and the SAT solver absolutely trounced it in terms of performance.

The biggest problem though, was when I would describe how we were using SAT to solve the graph, I generally would get extremely puzzled looks. Most other engineers have no exposure to them whatsoever.

<comment><USER12> A hill climbing algorithm doesn't make any sense to me for a dependency graph, it doesn't fit the domain at all.

Is there a canonical reference you'd recommend to understand this problem or a paper I could look at that was similar to this implementation?

<comment><USER13> Sometimes discrete graph theory problems can be relaxed into a continuous space where gradient descent can be used. If you want a concrete example of how this happens, take a look at the "Continuous Optimization" section in the "Thirty Years of Graph Matching in Pattern Recognition" paper (graph/subgraph isomorphism).

<comment><USER12> Thank you, I will investigate this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Maybe it's just me, but I feel the same way about MIPS solvers as well. The amount of optimization that has gone into these solvers over decades, and the kind of problems they're solving is staggering. Yet, you never hear about them since operations research is not as sexy as deep learning.

<comment><USER15> I experimented with MIPS before, mainly for side projects, and I found them amazing for easily solving optimization problems. Reading this article, I felt the logic used for constructing the Sudoku solver is quite close to what I would have done for MIPS: one constraint for one number per row, one constraint for the columns, one constraint for the 3x3 boxes, etc…

I am wondering if MIPS and SAT relate together somehow?

<comment><USER14> You can solve SAT problems using linear programming, I believe. I don't know if the free SAT solvers would compare to a commercial LP solver like gurobi or cplex.

<comment><USER16> Integer programming, not linear programming. Linear programming (without the integrality constraint) is in P, so you cannot use it to solve general SAT problems, which are NP-complete (unless a major and highly surprising theoretical breakthrough is found).

The free SAT solvers are very good, and _much_ better than commercial IP solvers at solving problems that are a natural fit for SAT. (Obviously, you can encode any IP as an SAT formula and vice versa, and the IP solvers are better at solving the problems where you actually have meaningful arithmetic.)

<comment><USER14> Thanks for clearing that up!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think music composers could benefit from composing software: i.e. they might specify different "facets" of a score, such as Parson code (next note frequency higher, lower, or equal to previous note) for melodic relationships, harmonical relationships between simultaneous notes, melodical relationships between a note in a variation of an earlier bar and a corresponding note in the same position of the earlier bar (i.e. the melodic relationship between the expected and actual surprising note) etc...

<comment><USER18> I am writing a Z3 music composer right now actually. Just as a toy project but the idea is solid: you have a passage that you need to harmonize? Here are three different versions that conform to the rules of fuxian counterpoint, etc

<comment><USER2> Hehe, I worked on one of these last year when I took a music theory class! You might enjoy this: [https://github.com/kach/recreational- rosette/tree/master/mus...](https://github.com/kach/recreational- rosette/tree/master/music)

<comment><USER18> Oh cool. Yeah, I looked around from "Music Composition Constraint Solving/SMT/Z3" stuff and didn't find anything which was surprising. I'll take a look at Rosette too, I've heard of it a couple times but never dug in

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you're interested in cutting-edge research SAT solvers, have a look at the annual SAT competition: [http://satcompetition.org/](http://satcompetition.org/) \- source code is available for all of them.

</comment><comment><USER20> For those hearing about SAT solvers for the first time, its worth mentioning that they are the basic component of hardware (and software) formal verification systems.

This is probably the largest practical application domain, which also drives most of the academic development.

<comment><USER21> >they are the basic component of hardware (and software) formal verification systems.

They are _a_ component. It's quite possible to perform formal verification without them, for instance the CompCert verified C compiler, or the DeepSpec end-to-end verification project: [https://deepspec.org/main](https://deepspec.org/main). SAT solvers generally have poor support for constructive logic, the kind of logic used in theorem provers based on dependent types like Coq. Systems based on classical logic like HOL integrate better with SAT solvers, but the lack of dependent types makes a lot of things much cumbersome to prove, especially if one wants proofs that can be extracted to programs.

<comment><USER22> > SAT solvers generally have poor support for constructive logic, the kind of > logic used in theorem provers based on dependent types like Coq.

Arguably, this is no longer the case. FStar [1] has dependent types, monadic effects, refinement types and a weakest precondition calculus (i.e. a richer type system than Coq) and uses the Z3 SMT solver to discharge many proof obligations. I've been using FStar recently and it works surprisingly well.

[1] - [https://www.fstar-lang.org/](https://www.fstar-lang.org/)

<comment><USER23> > > SAT solvers

> Z3 SMT solver

You are comparing different things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I work a lot with sat solvers, but with using in a proper language. Either cbmc for C (not Klee, not Z3 as these require extensive translations to obscure languages), or picat for a proper functional language with support for normal non-functional coding styles.

The sudoku sample is a few lines there, and it used to win many CSP contests. [http://www.hakank.org/picat/sudoku_pi.pi](http://www.hakank.org/picat/sudoku_pi.pi)

cbmc is esp. nice to autocreate proper test cases.

<comment><USER24> Have to add to obvious ones: prolog. Almost every prolog comes now with a sat solver.

With prolog it's usually easiest to formulate a problem. Efficient solutions are a bit of a black art though: [https://www.metalevel.at/prolog/horror](https://www.metalevel.at/prolog/horror)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Answer set programming with clingo ([https://potassco.org](https://potassco.org)) is a super powerful and user friendly way to constraint programming.

<comment><USER26> I used that to build my initial fantasy soccer team, it wasn't too hard to pick up amd the results were quite good. The team ended up performing very badly in real life, but that's not Clingo's fault.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I often think of SAT as the assembly language of discrete optimization.

I specify my problems in a higher-level DSL and a library then "compiles" it to SAT, where many solvers are available.

<comment><USER16> You should look into integer linear programs. They are a much useful "DSL" for discrete optimization. You get a lot of insight into flow problems from studying their LPs, for example, and it's very easy and efficient to solve flow problems with additional constraints using ILPs. Also, the state of the art for solving TSP and related hard path-finding problems uses techniques from integer linear programming.

<comment><USER27> You are correct. (I am very familiar with LP as well)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> OP complains that they are underused in industry, and goes on to show how to solve sudoku. That is not going to help me in my day to day job, can someone come up with a more pragmatic example where we could apply solvers?

<comment><USER29> From the article:

 _As an example, the often-talked-about dependency management problem, is also NP-Complete and thus translates into SAT, and SAT could be translated into dependency manager. The problem our group worked on, generating key and lock cuttings based on user-provided lock-chart and manufacturer-specified geometry, is also NP-complete._

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Composer, the defacto package manager for PHP, uses a SAT solver. It's pretty interesting looking at the code!

<comment><USER31> ... and also a frequent source of performance and memory issues.

<comment><USER32> Considering it's only a problem when updating dependencies and how good and reliable the result is, it's totally worth it.

Worst case in extremely big projects you just add some swap and let it run for a while, the time required is still in the order of tens of minutes.

Compare that to hours long c++ build times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> if a problem is NP-hard does not mean that each instance is hard to solve. From my experience many instances appearing in practice are easy to solve even if there very large. The problem with these instances is that it takes to much space to write done the SAT-formual. So you do not even get to the point where you would run the solver. But a simple problem specific search tree algorithm has no problem with solving it. Bottom line, if you really need to solve a NP- hard problem then you might want to look for fixed-parameter tractable algorithms.

<comment><USER17> Given 2 NP-hard problems and a transformation that translates (in polynomial time) any instance of NP-hard problem type 1 into an instance of NP-hard problem type 2, and if type 1 has a known fixed parameter tractable algorithm, can we "translate" the fixed parameter from type 1 to an equiproblematic parameter in type 2?

<comment><USER34> That's not the point (as I understand it). The point is that many instances of NP-Hard problems are, in truth, easily solved.

To give an accessible example, consider the problem of finding a factor of an integer. I know this isn't NP-Hard, but it's something most people can easily think about.

If you choose a random large integer, odds are it has a small factor. 50% of the time it's divisible by 2, and most numbers (in a very real sense) or divisible by 2, 3, 5, or 7.

So most of the time a randomly chosen number is easy to find a factor of. In a similar way, most real-world instances of NP-Hard problems are actually easy to find a solution for. The proportion of difficult instances shrinks as the instance size increases[0]. Specifically, if you have an instance of SAT generated from a real-world situation, the likelihood is that it's not actually that hard, so even if it's large, an off-the-shelf SAT solver might be able to dash off a solution.

So when confronted by an NP-Hard problem don't just instantly give up. Choose an algorithm that has a go, and there's a good chance you'll get a solution.

[0] There are formal, unproven conjectures about this.

<comment><USER17> Yes I understood this, but thanks for making sure anyway...

That still does not answer my question. I see and understand the _utility_ of fixed parameter tractability.

This naturally made me wonder about the proofs that a certain problem type P' is NP-hard (by being able to transform problem from P' to known NP-hard problem P and back): can these translations be used to deduce the relevant fixed parameter for NP-hard problems if one of the 2 problem types (P' or P) has a known fixed parameter tractable algorithm...

I.e. you did not answer my question at all, you just reiterated basic complexity theory

<comment><USER34> OK, then I don't understand your question. I'm not an expert, so perhaps I'm not in a position to understand, let alone answer, but it's worth clarifying in case someone else can step in.

Suppose we have two problems, A and B. We have polynomial time transforms between them, so they are considered "equally difficult".

In reading and re-reading the thread it appears that you (pl) are talking about having a "fixed parameter tractable algorithm" for one of the problems, say problem A, and you (sng) are asking if the transform then provides an equivalent fixed parameter tractable algorithm for B.

If that's the case then I don't know enough to answer, but my feeling is "probably not in general".

If that's not what you're asking then you might like to be more specific.

In either case I suspect I can't add anything useful.

<comment><USER17> Your last comment indicates you _do_ understand my question! so I upvote it :)

Not sure what you mean with _pl_ and _sng_ in "you (pl)" and "you (sng)"

Most fantastic would of course be a general method so that given as inputs the transforms between problem types, and the known fixed parameter, and fixed parameter tractable algorithm, gives as output the new fixed parameter, and a new fixed parameter tractable algorithm for the new fixed parameter.

I assume we do not have such a general method, so similarily interesting would be data points for constructing such a method: examples of deducing the fixed parameter for a problem domain, given the fixed parameter (and tractable algorithm) from those of a different problem type.

With enough examples perhaps a general method can be guessed.

<comment><USER34> > _Your last comment indicates you do understand my question! so I upvote it > :)

OK, cool, thanks!

> _Not sure what you mean with pl and sng in "you (pl)" and "you (sng)"*

"Plural" and "Singular" \- in English I can't make it clear that in some cases I'm talking about you and previous speakers, and in other cases I'm talking only about you. Other languages make it easier to make the distinction, in English it must be inferred, or made explicit.

> _Most fantastic would of course be a general method so that given as inputs > the transforms between problem types, and the known fixed parameter, and > fixed parameter tractable algorithm, gives as output the new fixed > parameter, and a new fixed parameter tractable algorithm for the new fixed > parameter._

I feel like that's a lot to ask, but we are beyond my expertise.

> _I assume we do not have such a general method ... With enough examples > perhaps a general method can be guessed._

I have no intuition about this at all, so I'll stand aside and let others with greater knowledge comment, if they're around.

<comment><USER33> Okay let (P,k) be a parameterized problem which admits a fixed-parameter algorithm with respect to k. That means you have an algorithm which runs in f(k)n time, where n is the input size and f is a function only depending on k (for example (2^k)*n). Hence, if your real-world instances have always a small k then you can solve arbitrary large instances. Note that one problem can have a lot of different parameters and not all admitting such an algorithm (unless the world is very different than we believe). Now let (P',h) be another parameterized problem and you have a polynomial time reduction from P' to P. Then, this reduction gives you a fixed-parameter algorithm for P' with respect to h if the value of k in the reductions depends only on h and nothing else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> SAT solvers are used by DNF and Zypper (respectively Fedora's and OpenSUSE's package managers).

<comment><USER31> Allegedly Windows Update runs on one as well, which is said to be the reason why "update rollups" are needed to keep the system fast (and also the reason why Windows 7 updating has been extremely slow for years).

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> One industry where SAT solvers get used frequently is in Electronic Design Automation. One comment already mentions its use in hardware/software verification. It turns out we can also use them to find efficient representations of Boolean functions (and therefore electronic circuits). This also generalizes to the synthesis of quantum logic circuits. They truly are amazingly versatile tools.

</comment><comment><USER37> Site isn't working for me; here's an archive link:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20180804000124/https://codingnes...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180804000124/https://codingnest.com/modern- sat-solvers-fast-neat-underused-part-1-of-n/)

</comment><comment><USER38> Does anyone with good knowledge of the space want to chime in on the state of the open source ecosystem? In particular, what are the canonical libraries for Java, C/C++, python, go etc. ecosystems? Does everyone just use Minisat or Z3 bindings in their language?

</comment><comment><USER39> What does this mean for NP-complete problems? Is the term "fast" only applicable to this small Sudoku board, or are solvers optimized to the point where something like O(2^256) doesn't take that much time to run?

<comment><USER40> It's impossible to create a solver that is efficient on any and all NP- complete problems. That applies to any solver.

Still, it is possible to create efficient solvers for some subset of the NP- complete problem space. They will work fine on some problem exhibiting the proper "shape" / internal structure. What that is is often hard to tell...

So in practice using SAT solvers (or SMT, or constraint, or MIP ones...) has some empirical side to it. It can work extremely well in some cases: it's possible to solve problems with 10s of millions of Boolean variables for example. It can also fail (time out). That depends a lot on the problem type and the solver heuristics. It's common in this area to try different solvers, and be happy if one gets a result in reasonable time. So there can be magic, but also some frustration.

As a practical example, SMT solvers are used for software formal proof. It's typical for those tools (like Frama C) to try several solvers. If any find a proof, you're good and the proof is for free (no human work needed). If none work, it's up to the engineer to reshape the problem to "help" the solver, or bite the bullet and deal with the proof (semi) manually with coq or a similar tool.

All this being said, modern solvers are really powerful. If it's a human scale problem solvable "by hand" with lots of work, a solver should deal with it very quickly.

<comment><USER41> Technically we don't know whether it's impossible to create an efficient solver.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> how does this compare with google's OR-Tools?

</comment><comment><USER43> Do any of these have python interfaces?

<comment><USER40> Z3 has a python interface. This said, SMT is an extension of SAT, and you're likely to use a SMT solver even for "just" SAT problems. Most SMT solvers support the SMT-LIB [1] file format, which is easy to generate from python. It also lets you switch engine easily.

Also, there are other kinds of interesting solvers. For constraint problems, one can check minizinc [2]. A bit like SMT-LIB, it's a language to describe constraint problems that is supported by many solvers. It's commonly used with gecode [3]. For many problems using minizinc will be much easier than trying to convert the problem in SAT (or even SMT) format.

Happy hacking, it's a fascinating domain!

[1] [http://smtlib.cs.uiowa.edu/](http://smtlib.cs.uiowa.edu/) [2] [http://www.minizinc.org/](http://www.minizinc.org/) [3] [http://www.gecode.org/](http://www.gecode.org/)

<comment><USER44> In pySMT, we have been working on making the simplicity of the z3 python interface available to other solvers both through SMT-LIB interfaces, but also native API integration for SMT/SAT solvers and OBDDs.

We are always glad to get more feedback!

[https://github.com/pysmt/pysmt](https://github.com/pysmt/pysmt)

<comment><USER45> In looking over whether the license would be amenable to distribution as part of a game, I noticed that your github page links to pysmt.org at the top, but that's only a redirect back to the github page :p

<comment><USER44> Eheh, we tried for some time to come up with a good webpage. At the end of the day, this is a library for developers, and as such we decided that the Github page is the most meaningful place to start. We put a lot of work in the main README, with revisions after each release, and we have a readthedocs for detailed documentation. Nevertheless, the github page gives you also other insights on what is the development status of the library (currently active but not daily), and areas of targeted improvement.

Re the licensing, pySMT is open-source and distributed under APACHE 2.0 .

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Very interesting. I have no formal CS training so this is really eye-opening to me.

</comment><comment><USER17> Actually these SAT solvers and model checkers seem like a valid niche for blockchain and a true bit protocol: as an average user of these (i.e. enough that you run it multiple times a day, but not so often that you have a full pipeline of scheduled problems to check) you can have it run on problemms of others (generating coin) and then when you are done interpreting the results of a previous run and reformulating your own problem, you can use your coin to solve your problem quicker...</comment>


New York Times Sees Sense: Paywall Comes Crashing Down - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2007/08/07/new-york-times-sees-sense-paywall-comes-crashing-down/

<comment><USER2> The value of an opinion is higher when more people hear it. They should have known this would fail from the beginning.

The fact is that there are lots of smart people giving out free content online. If you put a barrier to reading the smart folks in the NYT, then more people will go to the bloggers and other pundits out there.

</comment><comment><USER3> A smart move, long overdue. The web news business will probably evolve and mutate significantly in the next few years, and NYT was already well positioned for that. Dropping the wall puts them in an even stronger position.

</comment><comment><USER4> On the same day as the pronouncement of Dot Bomb 2.0. Timing couldn't be worse, according to that guy.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is totally a great move for the NYT. Their ad revenue will go through the roof.

<comment><USER6> Or not. This could be a disaster for them given that people like Friedman actually have a relatively loyal following. Going free is not the answer to everything.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, but I think the exposure that Friedman will now receive by making his columns free more than offsets the loss of "pay" revenue. This move will enhance both the Times readership and its reputation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> daniel-cussen As a consumer, it is nice to see market shrinkage.</comment>


Show HN: Fast Open-source autograder for coding problems (Django) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/arthtyagi/judge <comment><USER2> really nice man! yesterday I was wondering how to create an autograde for some simple thing I want to do. and as a coincidence i'm just starting to learn Django so I'll try to use it in my project. Thanks a lot!</comment>


FreeBSD Myths - <AUTHOR> https://wiki.freebsd.org/Myths <comment><USER3> > FreeBSD Has a Closed Development Model

Given that it took me 3 month to have Jack Vogel (then maintainer of the driver) acknowledge there was an uninitialized variable bug in the e1000(4) driver, leading to countless user frustration, despite detailed technical analysis and patch. Let me openly challenge this assertion... The issue ended up being fixed (or actually, buried in a huge patch) without attribution [ed. of course!].

My kind regards, but from experience, Linux folks is more open than BSD folks. YMMV.

> The BSD License Means Companies Don't Contribute Back They don't !

I've worked for 5 years in a [small] company using FreeBSD as the main development platform, heavily hacking the TCP and network stack. We leached plenty, and didn't contribute a single line back !

<comment><USER4> Let's just say that the Intel drivers have a pretty checkered history and your experience was not unique. There are new people at Intel working on their drivers, and they are more responsive. Also, iflib is coming, and it will move a lot of the stack-facing driver code from the Intel (and other) drivers to a common location. It is much higher performance and far less buggy than the vendor code it replaces.

The beauty of the BSD license is that you don't have to contribute back if you don't want to. Some companies contribute at lot. For example, the Netflix contribution of async sendfile, CAM support for NVME, etc.

<comment><USER3> My experience is not limited to the e1000(4) driver. The device tree driver subsystem is based on hardware model from the early 90s, the mbuf API is plagued with code duplication. Nobody want to touch this because the old guard is pretty much locking these interface. Everybody praise the Lord PHK, but his actual code in the tree is really sub-standard... The way to change things is to do what Adrian Chadd has been doing, sneaking in, and changing stuff behind's people back.

The way to contribute to BSD is easy, you have to be big to have enough influence (including monetary wise) to get stuff in. When you are a small nobody, you end up being treated as such.

Comparatively, I've had Linus look up at some issue I used to have with Linux USB stack (which were likely local interconnect issue). A world of difference.

edit: while I think about it, most _large_ changes in FreeBSD are discussed in private. Public discussion on patch and technical discussion is frowned upon. At the end of the day, the dev submit at 10kloc patch that is unrewiewable, and it gets in with rather poor amount of discussion. The only public discussion held is pretty much bikeshedding. There is _way_ more interesting technical conversation happening in a day on the LKML than will happen in a year on FreeBSD ml.

<comment><USER4> The problem with mbufs is that they have been around and been extended since the 80s. And Rototilling the interface will break a LOT of hardware. One of the nice things about iflib is that abstracts mbufs away from drivers. Of course that doesn't help much with crusty old drivers, but it does help some.

Having worked on both systems, there are some things I like better about mbufs as compared to skbs. But BSD badly needs the skb frags (eg, attached pages) concept to avoid excessive pointer chasing. We've been using an internal (not shared) patch that puts attached pages into an iovec, but it needs a lot of cleanup before upstreaming.

Oddly, I've had just the opposite experience as you. I've always found contributing to FreeBSD much easier. I was the author of network drivers for an IHV (not Intel) at a previous job. FreeBSD was a million times easier to deal with than Linux. I had a commit bit, and just developed my driver in head. Whereas with Linux, submitting even minor patches was a major ordeal thanks to davem and the netdev cabal. The Linux driver was often lacking features as compared to FreeBSD just because getting patches in was so time consuming.

There is actually quite a bit of public discussion of patches in Phabricator these days.

<comment><USER3> then maybe hardware vendors should contribute their code so that API could be changed all along, instead of keeping it paywalled. Though, I doubt they want people to look at how poor quality they are.

And yes, my job was also to "integrate" custom drivers for our appliances bells and whistles (eg. fail-to-wire interfaces, hardware sensors, etc.), in our source tree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you haven't read the book "Design and implementation of the FreeBSD operating system" ([https://www.amazon.com/Design-Implementation-FreeBSD- Operati...](https://www.amazon.com/Design-Implementation-FreeBSD-Operating- System/dp/0321968972/)) you should. It's possibly the best "applied" OS book. It also contains some interesting code samples in the book which is surprisingly uncommon in comparable books.

FreeBSD has for years had some features that are only now reaching 'mainstream' popularity (e.g. jails, which containers are based on). This books explains all that in quite a bit of detail and manages to stay high level enough not to get boring with the details but gives you enough detail to have a pretty detailed understanding.

It's also one of the few books that talks about networking in very practical terms (and not like OSI layers and whatnot) which makes me say that it's also possibly one of the best books on networking (you learn quite a bit about networks from how OS's work with them).

It also has the hands down best file system around (the book also talks about that).

And unlike large parts of linux, the kernel source is actually pretty legible.

<comment><USER6> As a lifelong Windows user, I've always been surprised about the obsession Unix users seem to have with filesystems.

I mean, as an end user (developer, but I assume that doesn't matter), what I expect from a filesystem is:

        * let me save a file in a directory
        * let me open it again

I also appreciate how many tools can use stats (eg filemtime) for good effect, and how fine grained permissions help keep my computer secure. All filesystems I've ever used let me do these things, and have for a long time.

This probably makes me a Blub programmer in file system terms. What am I missing? Why should I be dissatisfied with NTFS? I mean, in all honesty I don't even know which filesystems my various hard drives and sd cards have - <USER2> just save and open files.

<comment><USER7> It's about how the FS does this stuff.

Take for instance the old FAT filesystem from MS-DOS. If you use it on an SD/SSD (or even a USB key, that's more or less the same tech), you're likely to burn it fast, unless the device does "wear-leveling" internally. Journaling filesystems like Ext4 avoid that by make it so that they don't overwrite again and again the same sector even if the system overwrites the same file again and again.

Another aspect is resilience to system crashes or power outages. A sudden power outage can leave data half-written, including the file allocation table, which may result in severe data corruption. This is especially important for embedded devices, but not only. Some file systems are designed with that possibility in mind.

Then there are performance considerations. FAT had to group sectors into clusters because of the limited number of FAT entries, so a little 1Kb file would actually use something like 8Kb on the disk (Windows still display both sizes BTW). There's also caching policies. If you want something "crash- proof", you don't want any write cache. But if you want something fast, you want a big cache. some filesystems pick resilience, others pick performance, others let you set the parameters you want.

<comment><USER8> I think you have confused journaled with log structured filesystems.

<comment><USER7> Yes I had.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think the best thing about FreeBSD is the incredibly high quality of its users; I don't know how that would fit into a "myths" page, but it's worth knowing. Maybe in a section covering how much less popular FreeBSD is than Linux and other operating systems. It could point at that while there are (many) fewer users, they are, on average, extremely well-educated about their system.

I'm nearly always impressed by the quality of bug reports we get from FreeBSD users. They're more likely to include a patch, more likely to include specific details about how to reproduce the problem and reasonable theories about why the problem is happening. I don't know if this is correlation or causation (or which direction the cause/effect goes; i.e. are FreeBSD users better educated and that's why they choose FreeBSD, or are they better educated because they have to be in order to survive on a more challenging platform...thus it could be survival bias, rather than any real cause/effect) and I don't know if it is self-reinforcing (i.e. smart users breed more smart users because they're better able to guide new users in smart directions).

All that said, lest I begin to sound too positive about FreeBSD, I still use Linux exclusively for my production servers and desktop/laptop. It's a great system with great users, but the sheer inertia of the Linux ecosystem is overwhelming. The Linux kernel alone has more contributors in _each release_ than the entirety of the 400 commit bit havers on the whole of FreeBSD.

Luckily, of course, FreeBSD gets to leverage lots of things that are mostly driven by the Linux ecosystem (Gnome, KDE, etc. all sorts of things that are predominantly funded by Red Hat, Canonical, SuSE, IBM, etc. for their Linux products).

<comment><USER10> > I think the best thing about FreeBSD is the incredibly high quality of its > users;

I suspect survivor bias in action here. At least I would consider a possibility that these users are so well-educated about their system because they have no choice. And that's not always what one wants. I don't really want to be extremely well-educated about the details of my car. I just want to operate a couple of buttons, levers and other gadgets and get quickly and safely from point A to point B. I couldn't care less how the car does it, for all I care it could have magical pixies inside.

Now, I'm not saying BSD users doing it wrong. On the contrary, if it works for them that's great, and becoming the master of your tools is both personally rewarding and enriching. But - if you're preaching to outside audience, one has to mention that "BSD users are very knowledgeable about the details of their system" might also mean "you can't use this system unless you become an expert in it, if you're just interested in being a casual consumer you're in trouble".

<comment><USER11> I suspect self-selection: Right now, Linux is the most popular Unix. If you're going to another system, there's probably a reason, either technical or ideological. But to know enough to know why you might want to move already requires a lot of technical knowlege. And the will to actually do it, stick it out, and learn the different ways the system works requires a certain willingness to learn (although the excellent docs DO help).

It's not so much that you can't use the system if you're a casual consumer, it's that if you're a casual consumer, you won't bother.

Also, it's not a bias: We're trying to root-cause why the freeBSD community is so knowledgable. if it's because only the most knowlegable are capable of using it, that isn't a bias, it's just a result.

/nitpick

<comment><USER10> It's bias in a meaning that the cause is not BSD making their users somehow knowledgeable, but only users having enough motivation and knowledge to become power-users continue to use BSD. So if you approach it as a new user evaluating whether to use BSD, saying "BSD users are very knowledgeable" may mislead you as to the reason why.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The problem with these lists is that they are technically correct but misleading. E.g. yes, you can run Linux software with some plugins and Windows software with WINE. Except not every software would run, you'd have to jump through hoops that very well may be too high for your level of technical expertise and worst of all, you have no idea upfront if it'll work or not. Choosing OS is a big step, but it's also a foundational step which by itself does nothing for you - you then need apps. And when you read this list, say "OK, cool, all my software is Windows but I'm sure Wine will handle that" and then discover you can't really do any work - that's be bad for you.

Same with drivers - sure, BSD supports "wide range" of hardware. However, unless you are very skilled in hardware specs, there's no way for you to know whether _your_ card that you just bought in the store/on amazon is in this range. _This_ is the problem that bothers people - that _their_ card would not be supported, not the global number of supported cards.

Same for binary packages - it's nice that it has binary packaging tools, but how I know the software I want will be available in package form? E.g. on Linux I can look into Redhat or Debian package repos and see what they ship, or see download page of any major software vendor and look for "Download for Linux" button - but while I see a lot of DEB/RPM/APT/YUM distribution instructions, I rarely see any BSD instructions.

<comment><USER12> Packages currently available for FreeBSD 10: [http://pkg.freebsd.org/freebsd:10:x86:64/latest/All/](http://pkg.freebsd.org/freebsd:10:x86:64/latest/All/)

See also Freshports: [http://www.freshports.org](http://www.freshports.org)

<comment><USER13> Is there a cli tool to browse that, or do you have to go to the web?

<comment><USER12> If you have the ports tree [0] installed, you can browse through /usr/ports. There's a subdirectory in there for each port, named "category/port". You can search the ports tree using (replace _foo_ with your search term):

      $ make -C /usr/ports search key=foo

You can install the ports tree by running:

      # portsnap fetch extract

[0]: [http://www.freshports.org](http://www.freshports.org)

<comment><USER14> An alternative with less typing:

        $ whereis foo

This will return the path to the relevant port if it exists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Can someone debunk the myth I read about the FreeBSD package management system?

In Debian/Ubuntu/Mint style Linux it's enough to use

      apt-get update
      apt-get upgrade

and only the changed packages including all interdepencies are downloaded and installed in the correct binary form (x86/x64/arm...).

How does FreeBSD really handles package management and is it ahead or behind the current state-of-art in this respect? And what is on the roadmap to improve the status-quo (in case there is a need)?

<comment><USER16> That particular case - upgrading everything - is actually supported pretty well. Of course, there's the distinction between the base system and app packages - the base still needs to be upgraded another way (freebsd-update).

It's the much more useful case of upgrading complete subgraphs of package dependencies that still wasn't implemented when I last looked at it a year ago.

If you have application packages A1 and A2 installed, and a library package L on which both of them depend on, then if you upgrade A2 to a newer version which requires (and is linked against) a newer version of package L, pkgng will simply not upgrade both L and A1. The pkgng devs simply declared this to be out of scope.

For a time, pkgng (now just "pkg" as it's the only one) looked like it could be the best thing since sliced bread, only for the devs to arrogantly dismiss the most common dependency-related operation used in practice. It's the single biggest issue which turned me away from FreeBSD, since I don't want to write package manager code, don't want to maintain my own package repos, and don't want to track "snapshots" (i.e. 6-months old "freezed" package repos, without security updates) which are the three "workarounds" proposed to me at the time.

This is important because FreeBSD's ports and packages are on a "rolling release" model, i.e. often (daily/weekly, depends on the maintainer) updated to the latest upstream version, so the lack of complete subgraph package upgrades regularly leaves you with broken apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> re: FreeBSD is Just OS X Without the Good Bits

The "good bits" are things like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Quark.

Sure, I'm aware there are alternatives like Gimp and [whatever]. But the alternatives are kludges for edge case experts; and not for people who need to Get Stuff Done.

PS. I operate a FreeBSD server. It's great for that.

<comment><USER18> The 'good bits' of OSX is that there is no such a thing as 'drivers' from the users perspective.

If you have to use the word 'driver' \- it's not user friendly.

If you have to 'build' anything - it's not user friendly.

99% of people want to use their apps - even most devs just want a clean, stable, bug-free, well documented and consistent platform to develop on.

I have nothing against any of the unix flavours - all the power to them, but I'm not sure that these kinds of articles are hitting the mark when it comes to anything remotely resembling mass adoption.

Free BSD is not a 'product' really, I would argue that it's 'technology'.

<comment><USER19> _The 'good bits' of OSX is that there is no such a thing as 'drivers' from the users perspective._

Well, unless you buy some hardware that is not from Apple. Buy a 802.11ac USB stick (because your Mac has 802.11n and you cannot upgrade the hardware) with Mac drivers. The vendor decides to release a (buggy) driver update for El Capitan half a year after it's released.

Pretending that the driver problem does not exist on macOS does not make it go away.

(Mac user since 2007.)

<comment><USER18> "Pretending that the driver problem does not exist on macOS does not make it go away."

I never said there was not a driver problem.

I alluded to the user perception of drivers.

Users in this day and age should have absolutely no need to be aware of the concept of 'drivers'.

Do you have any drivers for your Android? iPhone?

The very concept may very well be dated and perhaps there is a a better solution in 2016.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> From the "FreeBSD is good for servers, not for Desktops"

> If even this is too much effort, PC-BSD is a full-featured desktop system > built on top of FreeBSD, with an easy-to-use installer and the option of > commercial support.

Seriously, it is this sort of "the user is so stupid if they can't compile their own software easily" attitude that turns me off about projects like FreeBSD. How hard is it to simply _not_ say this stuff, and gain a lot more users into the bargain? Just say something friendly, like "If you would prefer an OS that works out of the box, PC-BSD is also available".

<comment><USER21> I don't see that attitude in what you are reading.

Any OS which the user has to install themselves has to assume a certain amount of knowledge in the user. It's completely fair to say "And there's an even easier way if you prefer" as well.

<comment><USER22> Your version, "and there's an even easier way...", does sound nicer than, "If even this is too much effort, ..."

There's a difference in tone there.

<comment><USER21> Well, perhaps, but it feels incredibly minor to me. Even if true, I don't think the tone represents the intention.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I use FreeBSD, but if you think FreeBSD 4.x was great (related to the "everything after was bad" myth) and also if performance is your thing you should take a look at DragonFly BSD. Matthew Dillon who is largely responsible for FreeBSD works on this now.

But don't fear. People of both projects share a lot, just try different approaches. :)

[https://www.dragonflybsd.org/](https://www.dragonflybsd.org/) (also, if you think the website isn't the nicest I agree)

</comment><comment><USER24> I tried using FreeBSD for my web dev environment once. It was nice, I just hated the fact that I didn't have Dropbox and some node packages (like node- webkit) didn't quite work as expected.

</comment><comment><USER25> FreeBSD is a second class citizen when it comes to the JVM.

Myth?

<comment><USER26> No, very true, sadly. I wonder if the C-school hackers on BSD just look down on Java as far too 'Enterprisey' for them? Or has this changed?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Noteworthy that they say it can run as a xen domU, but not whether as PV or HVM. HVM is a huge performance hut.

<comment><USER28> Not only it supports both PV and HVM (with PVHVM in works) but also it can run as a dom0.

<comment><USER29> Last time I checked PV was only supported on i386.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I just want a single download freebsd distro for the desktop to play around with. Doesn't seem to exist.

<comment><USER31> Maybe DesktopBSD? [http://www.desktopbsd.net/](http://www.desktopbsd.net/) I dunno, I haven't used it but others have said that it's a simple install.

I bought a Lenovo Thinkpad to run a FreeBSD laptop and don't feel that the amount of work I had to do to get it to a useful state was all that different from the amount of work with Fedora on my desktop computer but I've been using both FreeBSD and various Linux distros for several years and don't know your amount of previous experience with either FreeBSD or Linux so YMMV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Does FreeBSD have anything to compete with V4L/DVB ?

<comment><USER33> Yes, it has V4L/DVB support via the multimedia/webcamd port/package, which is essentially a user space port of Linux' V4L/DVB drivers.

[https://www.freshports.org/multimedia/webcamd](https://www.freshports.org/multimedia/webcamd)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> From 2013

<comment><USER35> More accurately: from 2012, with minor updates from 2013 and 2016 [1].

1: [https://wiki.freebsd.org/action/info/Myths?action=info](https://wiki.freebsd.org/action/info/Myths?action=info)

<comment><USER4> Indeed. There is 100G support now, for example.

<comment><USER36> Bhyve not being mentioned under their virtualization section is a pretty big hole, too.

<comment><USER37> Bhyve's in the second paragraph of the virtualization section. It talks about virtualbox, then bhyve.

<comment><USER36> D'oh, don't know how I missed that.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Amazon's retailer sued user for submiting honest review - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/24vy8q/getting_sued_for_amazon_review/

<comment><USER2> I am amazed my the audacity of the law firm's threats on behalf of their client

read the letters here

[http://imgur.com/a/V0qf3](http://imgur.com/a/V0qf3)</comment>


With each passing year I believe more and more that debts must be taxed - <AUTHOR> A near zero interest rates all around the world makes people to take loans to buy bubble things (real estate, tulips, tech company shares, commodity options, etc) rather than geniunely earn money<p>So bad <comment><USER2> Sadly, this will only incentivize government to loosen credit standards and increase debt.</comment>


Launching a startup? Market to these guys - <AUTHOR> http://corp.pipl.com/demographics/launching-startup-find-early-adopters/

<comment><USER2> _" Also, it's pretty amazing to see that 85% of early adopters are men."_

It's be interesting to research the reasons behind that statistic. It could be that women are more risk averse so they don't sign up as often. Or that women have a higher bar for giving up the privacy of their email address and startups are failing to win their attention. Or startups market to their peers at the beginning, and as most startups are male-led that means they don't get the message to women as often.

There could well be a 'betali.st that appeals to women' opportunity here.

</comment><comment><USER3> I thought this was a parody. Obviously most well known and funded startups would have a large number of early users from SF / The Valley in technical professions.

<comment><USER4> It's not a parody but rather a thinly veiled ad for a company that harvests and sells your information, while providing no mechanism to get removed from their index: [https://pipl.com/help/remove/](https://pipl.com/help/remove/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Do we have an IFTTT recipe for this? I guess it's a pretty good idea to try this reverse search against all of our competitors to see if there is a pattern for our specific industry.</comment>


A black woman in tech makes $79,000 for every $100,000 a white man makes - <AUTHOR> https://www.recode.net/2017/4/4/15160924/silicon-valley-women-race-salary-companies-average-less-data-men-tech <comment><USER2> That's right, bicker amongst yourselves on who has it worse, while the owner class makes off with most of the money. But remember, diversity is your strength!

<comment><USER3> The article isn't bickering, it's just stating the study's findings. What is wrong with that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are they doing the same amount of work?</comment>


Saudi Aramco to Raise $25.6B in Biggest IPO Ever - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/business/energy-environment/saudi-aramco-ipo.html <comment><USER2> 25 billion on a 1.7 trillion dollar company is very little by percentage, and in turn the company is implicitly backed by a state that has unlimited funds. This makes me question the point of all this.</comment>


Petition the U.S. Government to Force the TSA to Follow the Law - <AUTHOR> http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/07/petition_the_us.html <comment><USER2> We all realize that there is no direct measurable effect on government from signing these petitions. And we also realize that signing these petitions and then taking no further action does not make you a hero.

But for god's sake, stop posting about how they're useless every time someone starts talking about one. First off, we get it, some people think they're painfully useless. Second off, just because you can't see any direct effect, or just because the effect wasn't exactly what you wanted it to be, doesn't make them useless. They are a good tool for rallying support behind an idea. They are a good tool for spreading awareness. They are a good tool for getting a cause a little bit of noticeably. They are a good tool for collecting thoughts in a coherent matter so they may be further discussed.

TLDR: We get it. You don't get petitions. Please figure it out or stop complaining. You're not helping a goddamn thing.

<comment><USER3> I speak up and say they're bad because I think signing these petitions uses up what little political activity the typical citizen is willing to exert. If they sign this, they're goign to be less likely to pressure their representatives directly, which, as we've seen from lobbyists, is the only way to get anything done.

<comment><USER4> On the other hand, these petitions spread awareness to far more people, educate them to start researching, and may instigate further action and discussion.

You say that his is "using up" what little people are willing to do... (and what are you doing?) Being against a small step in favor of an unstated big step does not make you a hero.

<comment><USER3> _educate them to start researching, and may instigate further action and discussion._

In my experience, this is a highly optimistic prediction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I predict it will end up just like every other "successful" petition on whitehouse.gov:

"We hear you, but you're wrong and we aren't going to change a damn thing."

<comment><USER6> The SOPA petition got Obama to publicly say he would veto anything that is overly broad, without due process and threatens the nations security (the DNS stuff in it). Soon afterwords they dropped it.

Albeit they made a new differently named one later, but still I don't think the situation is quite so hopeless.

Edit: fixed the spelling of publicly.

<comment><USER7> Was that a change, or just a press release clarifying his existing position on the issue? Cause I'm betting the latter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Well if you have standing, take them back into court (you know, the place where the government is actually willing to listen to you). Petitions are meaningless.

</comment><comment><USER9> None of this matters. Look at the response we got to "Legalize and regulate marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol"

[https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/what-we-have- say-a...](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/what-we-have-say-about- legalizing-marijuana)

</comment><comment><USER10> Let's face it, the only petition that will make a difference is the big one on November 6th. I'm amazed the TSA's policies and practices have not become a campaign issue. If you care about this, then petition the candidates to take a stance for civil liberties.

<comment><USER11> ok i'll make sure to vote for the candidate that has a reasonable anti anti- terror terror policy

<comment><USER3> Vote for "someone else" and don't buy into the two-party system. Our votes are basically ineffectual anyway.

<comment><USER12> "Our votes are basically ineffectual anyway."

That sentiment was quite prominent in 2000 during the Bush / Gore election. A lot of people voted for Nader hoping to legitimize a third party on the ballot. The common thinking was Gore and Bush were no different.

Given how world events unfolded, that view (in hindsight) was probably a pretty dumb one.

<comment><USER3> No, they _are_ ineffectual, period. Read up on the Electoral College, who doesn't have to follow the popular vote at all if they don't want to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Doesn't the court itself have some power to enforce its mandates?

<comment><USER14> Not usually. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers#United_Sta...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers#United_States)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you want change with the TSA first figure out what a politican can say when (s)he will be attacked for being soft on terrorists cos that's what's going to be happen if anyone tries to reform the TSA.

<comment><USER16> Simple - they are defending your civil liberties and they won't let terrorists destroy the freedoms we are granted by the constitution. They can also say that they won't continue increasing debt further through ineffective, unproven, and personally violating policies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Attempting to login to <https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/> is very slow and eventually gives an error message:

Our Apologies....

The site is currently undergoing maintenance. We appreciate your patience while we make some improvements.

Please check back soon.

<comment><USER18> I got this informative error message: "Additional uncaught exception thrown while handling exception."

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Looks like <https://petitions.whitehouse.gov> is using MongoDB

      Additional uncaught exception thrown while handling exception.

      Original
      MongoCursorException: couldn't send command in Mongo->__construct() (line 35 of /mnt/codebase/petition-release-2012-07-11/sites/all/modules/contrib/mongodb/mongodb.module).

      Additional
      MongoCursorTimeoutException: cursor timed out (timeout: 30000, time left: 0:0, status: 0) in MongoCollection->findOne() (line 22 of /mnt/codebase/petition-release-2012-07-11/sites/all/modules/contrib/mongodb/mongodb_cache/mongodb_cache.inc).

_Edit: The page is loading correctly now._

<comment><USER20> And..

''' Our Apologies....

The site is currently undergoing maintenance. We appreciate your patience while we make some improvements. Please check back soon. '''

Not so web-scale after all (at least not the way the whitehouse has configured it.)

I bet it's probably on the default setting where it starts dropping writes if it becomes overwhelmed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Apparently the White House petition page uses Mongo and has no dedicated 500 side. I am sure the tax payer paid many millions for this

"Additional uncaught exception thrown while handling exception.

Original

MongoCursorException: couldn't send query:  in Mongo->__construct() (line 35 of /mnt/codebase/petition- release-2012-07-11/sites/all/modules/contrib/mongodb/mongodb.module).

Additional

MongoCursorException: couldn't determine master in MongoCollection->findOne() (line 22 of /mnt/codebase/petition- release-2012-07-11/sites/all/modules/contrib/mongodb/mongodb_cache/mongodb_cache.inc)."

</comment><comment><USER22> ...because the fact that they simply ignore the law presently means that a petition will make them willfully start following it.

Delusional. It's time to leave America.

</comment><comment><USER23> Are any of you seeing a lot of duplicate Signature #'s? <http://o7.no/NhQtfu>

<comment><USER24> The duplicates indicate a kind of tie. What I've noticed before are sequences like 100,101,101,103, suggesting that the two middle signatures happened at more or less the same time.

5704, 5705, 5705, 5708 is a little odd - there should be a third 5705, or a 5707.

More: [http://citizentools.netalyst.com/2012/liberating- signatures-...](http://citizentools.netalyst.com/2012/liberating-signatures- from-white-house-petitions-a-new-tool-for-activists)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Are there petitions for poverty and healthcare somewhere?</comment>


Wind and solar are attracting the most funding - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-06/wind-and-solar-are-crushing-fossil-fuels <comment><USER2> One nice advantage of wind and solar farms is that they can be added incrementally. Maybe you would need just as many millions of investment in infrustructure to get the same output capacity but you can start with 1/10 of the required capital, set it up and have it online and keep adding as you go.

<comment><USER3> Last time I looked, inverters were the elephant on the room. They are a big fraction of the costs, and the small end scales to power^(1/2) in price.

Not to say that you are wrong, but you'll need at a minimum a several hundred thousand investment to stay competitive.

<comment><USER4> Yes, but at utility level the difference is invest in million increments to 100 million increments for solar(pv) and wind. While gas is in the same range, modern coal really starts at the top end of that range and nuclear is just an order of magnitude higher.

Wind and solar projects often get cancelled and restarted, mostly because the risk profiles allow for that. Committing to gas is dependant on existing infra, if there is a good gas supply infra then unlikely to cancel if planning permission ok. Once committed to nuclear, you either finish it or go bankrupt...

Coal is getting to be very risky from a regulatory perspective which is why power company execs don't like adding new capacity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems like this observation of Wright's Law in action should lead to more politically palatable policy prescriptions. If cap and trade is out, just shifting some energy incentives to favor renewable or large orders to grow the market could push renewable to the place where it just straight out dominates energy.

<comment><USER6> Except that unless batteries and storage solutions get orders of magnitude better, you have to back every megawatt of solar or wind with natural gas, oil, or coal for the calm, cloudy days.

<comment><USER7> Hydro is 6% of US electricity supply and is already used as built in storage.

Pumped storage is vastly better than batteries. Also the variance between median days and calm days for wind is far less extreme than generally assumed. PV solar also provides power in cloudy weather.

Anyway the US can get to ~99.99% from ~30% oversupply and ~6 hours of grid storage which is vastly less than many people assume.

PS: Cloudy calm days over large areas are fairly rare. Heavy clouds are generally associated with weather and increased wind. EX: Hurricane incoming, solar down wind UP.

<comment><USER8> _" Also the variance between median days and calm days for wind is far less extreme than generally assumed."_

Actually, the variance is worse than assumed by enthusiasts. Here's today's output from wind, hour by hour, for the entire CAISO area, which is about 400 miles across and covers most of California.[1] Today was a bad day; about 10x variation between peak wind and minimum wind. 5:1 is typical; a good day is 2:1.

You can also see similar data for PJM, which covers the Northeastern US.[2] Today's wind variation is about 2:1.

There's a myth that, with enough transmission distance, fluctuations in wind will average out. The two largest power grids in the US aren't seeing that. Maybe for the whole planet, but not for any area one can reasonably interconnect.

[1] [http://content.caiso.com/green/renewrpt/DailyRenewablesWatch...](http://content.caiso.com/green/renewrpt/DailyRenewablesWatch.pdf) [2] [https://dataviewer.pjm.com/dataviewer/pages/public/windpower...](https://dataviewer.pjm.com/dataviewer/pages/public/windpower.jsf)

<comment><USER7> At grid scale Peaks are unimportant, it's median and minimum numbers that matter. The grid needs to meet demand anything past that point is useless. Remember wind and solar don't use fuel they just need infrastructure. Hydro does use 'fuel' but can act as defacto storage by ramping up when there is a gap between supply and demand.

Also of note you can smooth out or shift solar by shifting power east-west without involving storage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hey we got plenty of wind here in Kansas, how about investment in storage/transmission so we can get it somewhere useful?

<comment><USER10> Hey, remember Obama's campaign goal in 2008 to switch our power transmission to HVDC?

What ever happened to that?

[0] [https://www.sindark.com/2008/01/07/hvdc-transmission-for- ren...](https://www.sindark.com/2008/01/07/hvdc-transmission-for-renewable- energy/)

<comment><USER11> An update: [http://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11322600/plains-eastern- transmi...](http://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11322600/plains-eastern-transmission- line)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The obvious reason for this is government, not because they're great technologies.

<comment><USER13> This is true.

They _are_ great technologies, but since they address the market externalities around carbon and other air pollution, the non-free market created by this situation won't achieve the aims that a theoretical free market would.

It's a bit embarrassing to free market boosters to see total global catastrophe be an unintended consequence of their policies, but they've often decided to dig in and deny obvious facts, which makes government intervention ever more necessary and welcomed by the population. Bit of an own goal really.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> OT: I hope that's not a new trend... "Renewables' share of power generation. Scale is shown in doublings."

It's a logarithmic scale, labeled as "doublings", with the background lines suggesting linear scale, and confusing rounding on the left (0.03% is "double" 0.01%). Also the left chart starts at 0%, where i think they wanted 0.00625% which got rounded.

</comment><comment><USER15> Sad! They are also the worst for the environment and most unreliable sources of energy.

</comment><comment><USER16> "The best minds in energy keep underestimating what solar and wind can do."

Of course wind and solar becomes "efficient" when the state arbitrarily funds and supports it. I am certain there is an entire mafia behind this, from the energy companies all the way to the politicians, ensuring that our public funds flow into their hands and that other forms of energy are properly discredited and taxed.

<comment><USER17> In terms of financial efficiency renewable and nuclear are completely different to fossil fuels.

With a gas power station their is a point at which the fuel is too expensive to compete and the plant is turned off.

With renewable energy the cost is in capital expenditure rather than fuel. It makes sense to run the generator as much as possible, regardless of how little money it makes. In a market dominated by fossil fuels the effective price is therefore always slightly less than the cheapest fossil fuel available. It becomes more valuable as oil or coal prices rise and less valuable as they drop.

Of course that is a ridiculous situation to be in. The only real reason to ever promote renewable energy/ or nuclear is because it is a better product with less negative impact. It is perfectly reasonable that this would cost more than fossil fuel. The only way for a private company to pay off the debt is to charge more than market rates for the energy produced.

<comment><USER18> And just to add - there are a lot of areas where renewables are already way cheaper or conventional generation just is not appropriate- like solar for replacing diesel generators, offshore wind near large coastal cities(try building a large nuclear plant near NY), there are also a lot of remote places where grid is expensive to maintain etc, etc

Also PV is the simplest, least maintenance power generation source if you need <few KW.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I feel like we've been down this road before. If some may recall, the federal government setup a giant loan program for alt energy companies. Many went bust taking a lot of money with them. I worry if the investment dollars are going to Just Another Solar Company, or is it demonstrated, proven technology that has potential?

<comment><USER20> You would've been a gem in the 1920s shaking an angry fist at how many oil companies were going bust and how fortunes were being squandered digging wells that produced nothing.

That whole oil thing is just a fad! Why can't people be happy with coal?

<comment><USER19> I think you misread the comment. Oil was proven and investment was pushing it to new heights. Do we really want to spend a lot of money on the same technology, and a new company, or new technology and innovation? I for one don't want another Solyndra. I want a company that is pushing a demonstrated advancement in technology.

<comment><USER21> Solyndra pushed a demonstrated advance in technology. It just didn't end up being cheaper than the rapidly-falling price of silicon solar cells. Sure, you can play Monday-morning quarterback on that deal, but it was a reasonable bet and the investors (who lost a ton of money) were not fools.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


DSM-5: The Future of Psychiatric Diagnosis - <AUTHOR> http://www.dsm5.org/Pages/Default.aspx

<comment><AUTHOR> "Publication of the fifth edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) in May 2013 will mark one the most anticipated events in the mental health field. As part of the development process, the preliminary draft revisions to the current diagnostic criteria for psychiatric diagnoses are now available for public review and comment."

Do the categories make sense to you? Do the criteria defining the categories make sense? Here is the opportunity to comment to the authors of the new manual while it is still being drafted.

</comment><comment><USER2> I hate to say it but, this thing keeps getting bigger so they can bill for more stuff. Yes, I know the FAQ calls this bs ( <http://www.dsm5.org/about/Pages/faq.aspx> ), but look at the rest of the answer.</comment>


Female and Male Brains Operate Differently at Molecular Level, New Study Reveals - <AUTHOR> http://www.sci-news.com/othersciences/neuroscience/science-female-male-brains-molecular-level-03125.html <comment><USER2> Obligatory reminder that since gender is not innate, studies of male/female brain differences are as likely to be showing the cumulative effect of years of social differences on neurochemistry, as they are to show biological differences between the sexes.

<comment><USER3> Also, this particular study was done in rats, not humans. So without further research, we don't know whether it applies to humans at all.</comment></comment>


Introducing Echo Spot - <AUTHOR> https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B073SQYXTW <comment><AUTHOR> it is equipped with a camera...and as its advertisement shows, one of its targeted space is in your bedroom, among many other intimate places in your house...

But as we have already been doing with our laptop, one could always tape the camera in this thing...but if I were the designer, perhaps I would put a manual shutter there to control the camera visibility for either laptop or this echo spot...

I just feel that these kinds of ubiquitous devices need better access control mechanism, instead of the uncustomizable all-or-nothing configuration....</comment>


Setback in cancer fight - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/24441526-ede0-11e6-ba01-119a44939bb6?desktop=true <comment><USER2> [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:9Zm6y5...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:9Zm6y5q6zyoJ:https://www.ft.com/content/24441526-ede0-11e6-ba01-119a44939bb6+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au)

For those that want to read without subscribing</comment>


Wendell Potter: How Health Insurance Industry and I Invented Choice Toking Point - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/14/opinion/healthcare-choice-democratic-debate.html <comment><USER2> Title is misspelled: Should be "Talking", not "Toking".

<comment><AUTHOR> I did it because of HN's 80 characters limit. I think that including the name of the author is more important than orthography.

<comment><USER3> Except _toking_ has a rather specific meaning, and this creates a very different expectation about the article's contents.</comment></comment></comment>


The first iPad electronic health record, DrChrono, gets major update - <AUTHOR> http://www.imedicalapps.com/2011/04/ipad-electronic-health-record-drchrono-review/

<comment><USER2> Why does the most expensive plan have a setup fee of $3499, while it's waived for the cheaper plans? Is it the medical billing integration?

<comment><USER3> Most probably. I've spent the last 4 months simply getting a value to be sent from a custom application to a medical billing system . . .

Nice review, it was relevant to my interests.</comment></comment>


Google Maps doesn't fit the long tail - <AUTHOR> http://stormpulse.wordpress.com/2007/06/28/one-size-fits-all-mapping-doesnt-fit-the-long-tail/ <comment><USER2> Erm.. Wha? The Long Tail is just a concept.. It's not restricted to user- generated content. I'd say that Google Maps is the perfect example of The Long Tail, because even though most people spend their time looking at San Francisco or wherever, Google Maps has photos of most of the earth!

Maybe the article would be better retitled "Applications Built on Google Maps Can't Fit the Long Tail". But even that's debatable.

<comment><USER3> You're right--that probably would be a better title. And yes, like many things worth saying, it is debatable.</comment></comment>


Remind HN: November is Launch an App Month - <AUTHOR> As discussed previously on HN(http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1773398) a bunch of us are going to commit to actually launching an MVP by the end of November.
We're gathering in the Facebook group here: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_141079939271952
What are you going to be launching in November? <comment><USER3> I am launching <http://getbizen.com>

Bizen provides better intelligence for franchises. A web-based application that is integrated with the store point of sale to provide comparative analytics, trend analysis, key performance indicators, goal setting, and notifications.

I received seed funding from Jumpstart Foundry in September and am hoping to have my first paying customer in November.

These are a set of tools I have been using for my own franchise stores and am now converting into a product that I can take to market.

I haven't written much about it yet and haven't posted it to the Facebook group. I have been so damn busy creating the product and getting my investor pitch ready for a "demo day" on November 3rd.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hey all: we just launched an app to help you all launch awesomeness for the November Startup Sprint. We've lined up awesome daily content about building and launching sweet stuff, as well as a great way to track and share your progress. Check it out here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1857508>

</comment><comment><USER5> Why fb dude? I wanna keep fb private. Twitter list? Google Group? Something else?

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't make the group, I just saw it in the previous thread and noticed that it already had traction and quite a few members, I think it's better to discuss in one central place rather than fragmenting into a bunch of separate lists.

If you don't want to join the group, just post here.

Also for those of you wanting to keep it private, consider this: Studies show that publicly committing to a goal significantly increases one's chances of accomplishing it successfully.

<comment><USER6> He wants to keep his Facebook private, not necessarily the project.

Which I understand entirely. I'd really rather not be linked to everyone under the sun on Facebook. There's already enough people I'm connected to who are unwittingly sharing my deets with hundreds of unscrupulous app developers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Built an MVP over the weekend, thought it might be of use to the group - <http://ratemymvp.com>

So many great MVP's get posted on HN but disappear within a day or two - <USER2> wanted to offer an additional place for people to post their projects for review and discussion by the startup community. Please let me know what you think - and if you've got an MVP, send me what you have and I'll put it up.

<comment><USER8> Heya! My MVP is called "www.wantmyjob.com". I'd love an entry on RateMyMVP :-)

What info should I send you? I don't see an easy "add a project" link...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> A call tracking and intelligence app. It is still being polished, but I think another full force week and we will be up there. Live, but still got some polishing to do.

<http://contexium.com>

Edit: The long description: You know how a business receives 100 phone calls per day but noone can tell listen to every call for feedback? We not only track each call, but we mine each call and score them so you get a snapshot of what customers are saying.

</comment><comment><USER10> I will be launching <http://lotaar.com>

Lotaar is a TV/Radio guide that rminds you when your favourite programs are about to go live.

</comment><comment><USER11> A set of highly reusable iOS UI libraries. UIKit is nice, but a bit limited. In the process of building iPhone/iPad apps, I've created a bunch of controls that I think other iOS developers might find useful. Hoping to get the first 3 launched this week, with another 7 or so to follow.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm going to launch a side project of mine that I've been working on since May.

It's a somewhat ambitious Mac OS X application, and with no-one to keep me in check, the design has become -- sprawling, to say the least...

To improve the odds of ever launching it, I've decided on a single use case that determines my "MVP". As soon as the app can be used to build that demo, I'm going to launch it as a free alpha.

Last week, I actually shipped a minimalist iPad application (it's a port of a Mac app that I wrote way back in 2002):

[http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/turtledoveland/id399324585?mt...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/turtledoveland/id399324585?mt=8)

Luckily it was approved on the App Store on the last days of October, so I can't use its release as an excuse to cop out of "Launch An App November" ;)

</comment><comment><USER13> Cool!

I happen to be working on a project to scratch my own itch. It's an iPhone application. I've been teaching myself flamenco guitar, which requires a specialized metronome (for counting the various rhythms).

I'm using titanium appcelerator to build the application, and it's about 50% done now (just UI work now, the functionality is there).

It's essentially a clone of beatvibe <http://tivstudio.com/node/1>

I am confident I will have this app submitted to the app store by end of november.

Here's the current code if anyone is interested, still very much a work in progress <http://github.com/himmel/Flamenco-Metronome>

I only started working on this in my off time about a week ago.

</comment><comment><USER14> This month I'm launching Fanfare <http://getfanfare.com> into beta.

Fanfare is a social media marketing platform that lets online content creators (bands, writers, video producers, etc.) promote their content and engage with their audience.

The secret sauce is that we provide an easy way for online publishers to distribute their content to users only after they take a social action. Publishers can log into our site and gain insight in who's accessing their content, sort their fans by Klout score, export their info, and reengage.

Version 1 is live, let me know if you'd like to see a demo. We're currently working on Version 1.5. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER15> Just launched <http://www.tradesalerts.com/> ... it is a stocks alerts service for short term investors looking to profit from cyclical patterns in stocks.

Do take a look and give me some feedback.

<comment><USER16> Mostly looks good, but I'd use a different font, or actual handwriting on top of the graph. And the arrow is ugly.

Maybe have a free option to get some traction.

<comment><USER15> Thanks.. I am working on a few graphs of the various trends and various email/portfolio screenshots to help users better illustrate the service. I'm still pondering how best to setp the Free option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Aww hell.

I'm committing to launching DuctDo.com, a companion webapp to DuctMail. DuctDo: Do stuff! (Where as DuctMail was "Remember Stuff").

DuctDo will be about forming habits, and about setting goals for yourself. For example, let's say you procrastinate a lot, and you want to have some form of public reminder system in place, you tell DuctDo what you want to do. DuctDo then sends you an email every morning telling you to do it, and then at the end of the day, it asks you for an update. Will link into things like Twitter and Facebook and update people with your progress... or lack of progress.

DuctDo will be the second part of the Ductivity suite of web apps.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm going to be launching my new ActionScript 3 API and JavaScript/HTML5 API, and as an unexpected bonus the antique ActionScript 2 - one of my users back- ported it for me.

Aside from that ... keep working on new features, had a cool idea today to build some reports and let portals tap into some of the collective data I have so they can identify sites they should be getting their games on and whatever trends emerge for the various categories of games... with luck (or more data) it might even identify what kind of games they should be building/licensing.

</comment><comment><USER19> I am planning on getting BeerLedge.com up and running. It is going to be a mix between Foursquare for beer drinkers and RateBeer. For some reason I have been infatuated with beer and finally have set a goal to tie in this infatuation with a website. We shall see where I go with it though since I am currently trying to complete nanowrimo[1] as well.

Not sure why November is such a great month of challenges like this (aren't we all growing mustaches too?) Good luck to everyone!

[1] <http://nanowrimo.org>

</comment><comment><USER9> Should we have a demo day or launch day?

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm going to launch <http://weddingtype.com>

We have a MVP up which is just a wufoo form, but I want to commit to getting the real application finished!

<comment><USER21> I stumbled on your project (randomly) awhile ago, did you end up getting into the winter session?

<comment><USER20> I'll know whether we have an interview with YC tomorrow. :) Interviews are held in a couple weeks.

<comment><USER21> That's awesome, good luck!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I won't be joining the FB group (privacy) but I will be committing to launching _something_ by the end of the month. (I have a couple of ideas and will decide which by Wed.)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable Facebook group: <http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_141079939271952>

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm going to launch <http://achievabl.es/> which is basically going to be a SMART goal (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria>) setting community.

I find that often I am too ambitious in making my goals and if I can have a bunch of other people look at them and give me feedback it would be very beneficial to me, and hopefully others too.

</comment><comment><USER24> A couple Philly guys are doing the same thing as phillycowrimo - just to finish a usable code project in a month, no matter the state. Some are going to be webapps, some iPhone. Should be a fun experiment, and if it's successful we'll repeat it with a bit more organization (and cities?) next year.

<http://phillycowrimo.wordpress.com>

</comment><comment><USER25> We are launching our private beta for <http://eyeclash.com/> this month.

Eyeclash is a video-chat based social network where users can play games, watch videos, and run applications alongside video chat. It is 100% browser- based. The product is still really raw and buggy right now but we're pushing it no matter what.

More news to follow.

</comment><comment><USER26> We'll launch <http://printify.de>, a startup around social media printing.

</comment><comment><USER27> I am working on a full release of <http://CharityAuctionOrganizer.com>

A little removed from the tech-centric mainstream, but it provides a web based tool for managing fund raising auctions.

The site is live and functional now, with a full feature release expected by the end of the month.

</comment><comment><USER28> We will be making a full-on push for our personal finance app Can I Afford it Now? <http://www.caniafforditnow.com>

If you missed giving us feedback, please do so at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1843748>

Thanks

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm working on an iPhone app called 'Escape the Submarine'. It's a room escape game similar to the ones on <http://www.jayisgames.com>.

I'm using the Lua bindings provided by iPhone Wax to do the level design, and it's going quite well.

</comment><comment><USER30> Just launched something different (well, not aimed at the HN crowd). Actually one of my better performing sites. It's an iPhone Gossip Browser which builds off our automated news feed aggregation platform.

<http://gossipbucket.com/app>

</comment><comment><USER31> I was feeling under the weather yesterday and didn't feel like doing work, so I launched <http://www.messageunicorn.com>

the idea is to put a message out to people you lost touch with who you can't find any other way.

</comment><comment><USER32> Hoping to privately launch <http://ironclan.com>

</comment><comment><USER33> Just launched: <http://adventurecow.com>

Make stories just like Choose Your Own Adventures!

HN thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1857156>

</comment><comment><USER34> Tea for iPhone, a tool for optimizing the taste of your loose leaf teas, statistically.

<http://www.twitter.com/teaapp>

<http://www.facebook.com/teaapp>

<comment><USER35> For some reason I totally misread your description and got it into my head it was an app where you took a photo of the tea-leaves in the bottom of your cup and it "statistically" gave you a "reading" from them. Maybe that's a possible extra feature? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm going to launch <http://www.gmbhnews.net> , I still have some text improvements to do , but this shouldn't take more than 2 days, almost all the beta coding work is one.

</comment><comment><USER37> I am committed to launching <http://wellhubstudios.com>, a ecommerce platform for wellness professionals, yoga studios. Appointment Booking and Class Scheduling....

</comment><comment><USER38> I launched <http://tekbob.com> :)

</comment><comment><USER39> I just launched videolla.com. Now have a goal to add feature/day, polish it, get some traction and make early users fall in love with it. :)

Videolla is basically video publishing and monetization platform. Best in this galaxy.

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm committed to launching Crate and getting our first customer in November: <http://letscrate.com/>. (let me know if you're interested, email in profile!)

</comment><comment><USER41> Hackety Hack 1.0, for reals.

</comment><comment><USER42> I will be launching <http://churchofturing.com> \- a resource for autodidactic learners from all paths that lead toward the nerdery.

</comment><comment><USER43> I just launched <http://socialpicly.com> 3 minutes ago. Add your support for tomorrows elections to your facebook profile picture.

</comment><comment><USER44> If I can get the Facebook platform to play nicely with me I'll be launching a universal wishlist with a twist, hopefully just in time for the Christmas present buying rush...

</comment><comment><USER45> <http://exceptionalasp.net/>

Early version is already live, this month is about filling out features and content and starting to sell it.

</comment><comment><USER46> I am launching Local Strange [localstrange.com]. It's a real-time replacement for the craigslist erotic section.

I got video chat working.

Ill have phone / txting done this week.

Next week im implementing a credits system.

</comment><comment><USER47> OK. I'll through my hat into the ring.

secureattach.com

I've got the MVP mostly done its time to ship. I've locked down one test user site, so I'm looking for more. Let me know if your interested.

</comment><comment><USER48> <http://quickbrownfrog.appspot.com>

Quick Brown Frog: a 100% in-browser, non-Flash, non-Java typing tutor.

</comment><comment><USER49> Is the idea behind this to launch an app in a month or to create and launch an app in just a month? The latter sounds much more intriguing.

</comment><comment><USER50> I'll be working on a beta release of ScheduleHQ, an employee scheduling app:

<http://schedulehq.com/>

</comment><comment><USER51> I have a ludicrously busy month, but every sunday I'm going to be working on my as yet unnamed movies to see before you die project.

</comment><comment><USER52> Had That Beer <http://www.hadthatbeer.com>

Plan on launching it into a private beta this month.

</comment><comment><USER53> Ok, here's mine, and since it's November now ( _already, screams_ )

<http://www.ZoomRead.com>

</comment><comment><USER54> Nice! I'm launching <http://wikizu.com> hopefully within the next week or two.

</comment><comment><USER55> I'll launch <http://socialgrapple.com/>

Track anyone's Twitter social graph over time.

</comment><comment><USER5> Planning to launch private alpha of <http://www.createens.com>

</comment><comment><USER56> I launched <http://rejose.com>

Some kind of technology trend tool and job aggregator.

</comment><comment><USER57> With any luck, <http://soontyphoon.com> is coming soon.

</comment><comment><USER58> I have a busy month, but this has inspired me to build the Android app I keep thinking about...

</comment><comment><USER59> omg my mailbox is, once again, full of facebook joining requests ! :)

</comment><comment><USER60> Sort of like NANOWRIMO? Nice idea. I may try!</comment>


Treat your direct reports, the way you'd want your boss or board to treat you - <AUTHOR> https://www.bettermanager.us/the-four-pillars-of-better-management-2-team/ <comment><USER2> Hi, your site BetterManager has a lot of really good content. As a person who just started leading and managing a squad, I find it really helpful.

By the way, our company HighOutput Ventures is going to soft launch a product which is an online tool that helps track and organize one-on-one sessions between managers and their teammates.

You might be interested to try our product out. It's still in Beta so everything is free. :)

Here's our website: [https://www.identifi.com/](https://www.identifi.com/) Or you can directly sign up here: [https://app.identifi.com/](https://app.identifi.com/)</comment>