An open source platform for emulating the fruit fly brain - <AUTHOR> http://neurokernel.github.io/

<comment><USER2> This is really cool, also check out [http://www.openworm.org/](http://www.openworm.org/) which was started around the same time. I wish there was a comparison of the two projects.

<comment><USER3> These projects are amazing, and I only wish I knew about them a few years earlier. I studied C. elegans quite a bit when I was in school, and I also worked with D. melanogaster for a genetics project. I wonder how OpenWorm will help shape research in the years to come as it matures. It's a really nice surprise to see useful, open software that it so pertinent to the things I spent so much time studying - I hope I can still reach the people who picked up on my old projects and share these tools with them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is really cool. The other fruit fly project I was impressed by recently was Mihir Garimella's FlyBot: Mimicking Fruit Fly Response Patterns for Threat Evasion [1] which was a quadcopter that demonstrated evasive behavior. I really like looking at biomimicry implementations because there are so many levels on which to do it. Mimir was trying to mimic outwardly observable behavior while Neurokernel is trying to mimic neural pathways.

[1] [https://www.googlesciencefair.com/projects/en/2014/6d1893c20...](https://www.googlesciencefair.com/projects/en/2014/6d1893c2059f3eda04a13d6bda68a553f7760148ffc92ff3c97f30725ef1b195)

<comment><USER5> Please note that while interesting in the context of a 14-year old executing it (under heavy supervision, I suspect based on the trajectory model), the translation from fly or bee to robot has been done for almost thirty years on a much larger scale. If you're interested, check out the work of Srinivasan, Borst, or this cool piece of engineering:

[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v497/n7447/full/nature1...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v497/n7447/full/nature12083.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is very important. When people talk about emulating/uploading human brains, they extrapolate computing power and scanning to a point ~2040 when we will have the capability. But guess what, we have the capacity to upload a roundworm now or a fly and have tried to, and we cannot. Wy? it seems that there is something we are missing and most likely it's the science. tl;dr we need to understand brains better before we can upload a human or a fly, this kind of project will get us there.

<comment><USER7> I would be more impressed by your argument if these projects seemed to have any support or real energy behind them besides a handful of hobbyists and grad students. There's snake oil with far more funding and backing than these projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As far as I understand, the endgame of this stuff is a piece of software which would make a robot that was an exact physical equivalent of a fly without a brain behave exactly as a real fly does, assuming we had the computing power to run it in real time. Are these projects actually going for that, or do they have some more modest goal for what they expect to achieve, say, before 2020?

</comment><comment><USER9> Well if they scale this up a bit - they can use it to fly planes.

"Brain in a Dish Flies Plane" [http://news.discovery.com/tech/robotics/brain- dish-flies-pla...](http://news.discovery.com/tech/robotics/brain-dish-flies- plane-041022.htm")

</comment><comment><USER10> This project is a threat to the Linux kernel. Matthew Garrett may become interested again in fruit flies and stop finding and fixing the moist weird bugs in the ACPI/PM implementation of Linux.

<comment><USER11> I think the term kernel is being used as gpu kernels/programs; those created with OpenCL, etc..; So its a proper naming scheme.

Maybe we should blame the GPU folks for switching from "shader " to "kernel" for general computing shaders instead?

<comment><USER10> Argh, it is horrible when you have to explain jokes.

Matthew Garrett (mjg59 on HN) is a well known Linux developer. [1] He has a real talent for discovering and fixing weird, _weird_, problems with hardware firmwares, especially issues related to ACPI and UEFI. Have a look at his Linux.conf.au 2014 talk [2] to understand the kind of weirdness we are talking about (You will want to cry and laugh at the same time).

Before becoming a kernel hacker, Matthew Garrett earned a PhD in genetics studying fruit flies.

Now this project is very cool, both from the programming point of view and from the fruit fly point of view. Hence the fear that Garrett may abandon his spectacular work on the Linux kernel to go back to his original academic interests.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Garrett](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Garrett) [2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP9c7aCZqtU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP9c7aCZqtU)

<comment><USER11> Oh thank you for the context; i've misunderstood what you have said than; i thought you were joking about a "fruit fly kernel" not being a proper kernel to replace the linux kernel, with some sarcasm added to it

Sorry, stupidity mine

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Great project. After poking around the site, I'm still wondering, what GPU hardware is necessary to run the code?

<comment><USER13> Any Nvidia card made in the last 5 years will do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Are we running this VM inside another VM?</comment>


Aaron Klug, Nobel-winning scientist who examined molecular structure, dies at 92 - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Aaron-Klug-Nobel-winning-scientist-who-examined-13418637.php <comment><USER2> His prize was :

> for his development of crystallographic electron microscopy and his > structural elucidation of biologically important nucleic acid-protein > complexes.

Including virus structure, such as tobacco mosaic virus:

[http://pdb101.rcsb.org/motm/109](http://pdb101.rcsb.org/motm/109)

</comment><comment><USER3> 92 yo, so I searched and here it is: _" Winning a Nobel prize adds nearly two years to your lifespan - and it's not because of the cash that goes with it.

Research from Warwick University reveals that the status alone conferred on a scientist by the world's most famous prize is enough to prolong his life (only male laureates and contenders were studied because women tend to live longer)."_ [https://www.theguardian.com/education/2007/jan/17/highereduc...](https://www.theguardian.com/education/2007/jan/17/highereducation.uk1)

<comment><USER4> Do the effects of two Nobel prizes compound? One data point says yes: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Sanger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Sanger)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What an incredibly annoying website, popups, auto-playing videos, loaders that cause the page to bob up and down for a good 5 seconds. Yuck.</comment>


Ask HN: Bootstrapping; should I buy a site template? - <AUTHOR> I'm bootstrapping a recruiting process outsourcing consultancy for internal HR and recruiting staff and want to get a start on marketing, but don't have the funds for a designer and I haven't touched anything HTML related since 1998.
Is it advisable to throw the $50 at a template from ThemeForest or one such site early in the game?  It would likely just be a landing page with an overview of services, and a contact form or phone number, I've received some validation on my concept in the form of an HR manager saying to come back in Q2 and they'll have the budget to talk about signing an agreement.  So if anything, it'd be a very temporary site until successfully closing my first client.
I'm not selling a consumable product, nor is it SaaS, just an outsourced business process and I can swallow $50 much more easily than the costs for a designer to put together the type of site I'd be looking for.
Any feedback would be immensely appreciated! <comment><USER2> I'd actually go further and say that you shouldn't even buy a theme, you should just use Squarespace, Wix, Weebly or whatever other easy site host+design catches your fancy.

You're bootstrapping and your time would be better spent on marketing and sales than even on the relatively small amount of time it might take to modify a theme or start from scratch.

<comment><USER3> This is doubly true for developers: separate out your marketing website and product. Spend less than a day on your initial (!) marketing presence and the rest of your time building the actual product. It's oh-so-easy for devs to get pulled into spending way too much time on static marketing pages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Definitely go with an inexpensive theme.

It's a great value, gives you good design out of the box and lets you focus on building the more critical elements of your service.

Design is important. Initially though you just need something that looks good, quickly and inexpensively. Once you're profitable you can invest in better design.

I would go with bootstrap based themes. I see more and more corporate sites using bootstrap. It looks good and is easy to develop with.

As others have mentioned if your site is SaaS watch out for themeforest and their license requirements. Otherwise you'll be in love with a theme that will require an extended license that is $500 to $1,000. More friendly license terms for SaaS are offered by [http://wrapbootstrap.com](http://wrapbootstrap.com). I'd look there first.

Good luck getting up and running fast.

</comment><comment><USER5> $50 is a small investment if you think about how much time it would take to get back to HTML circa 2015. I downloaded but haven't started the trial version of Pinegrow, so I can't speak from experience how easy it is to actually use it. But their videos show that the web editor lets you manipulate themes before you even buy them, giving you a good idea if it'll work for what you want even before purchasing. (I did try that feature out and it works well!) It'll give you the ability to modify the theme as you validate your business until you get to the level of success that a custom design by a designer may make sense.

EDIT: Link to Pinegrow

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

</comment><comment><USER6> Do you need to buy it yet?

Don't fall intro the trap of equating using your credit card to building your business.

It's tempting to spend the early days boostrapping buying themes, registering for SaaS plans, and setting up your Trello board. But be careful. If you spend too much time on that, you won't have any code, and you'll burn out before you even start.

My advice: Code as much as possible without buying a template. When you're ready to make it look good, you can buy a template. But first, make sure you get yourself to the point where you need one.

</comment><comment><USER7> I would agree. I have used [https://wrapbootstrap.com/](https://wrapbootstrap.com/) to buy a theme to develop a bootstrap-based site for my wife's speech pathology business. I also ended up integrating Google Analytics, which was also extremely simple.

I really like the single page applications. Here is the one i designed for my wife ([http://www.socialability.com.au](http://www.socialability.com.au))

</comment><comment><USER8> I'd say go for it. $50 is chump change compared to the cost of hiring a designer or the time cost of relearning HTML, especially since you really don't need anything more than a landing page at this point in time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent, thanks for the response!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd be very wary about using ThemeForest for anything past a landing page. They keep changing their ToS for SaaS built using their templates.

Wrapbootstrap.com is a good alternative with much better terms.

</comment><comment><USER10> ThemeForest has some fairly restrictive licensing terms on their designs. If you are doing a small site that won't make you much money then of course this is the best route. If not then exploring Bootstrap designs from [http://wrapbootstrap.com](http://wrapbootstrap.com) and looking at a fully custom design from [http://99designs.com](http://99designs.com) might be your best bet.

</comment><comment><USER11> I suggest you use Bootstrap, and use that unmodified. It'll look far better than anything you'd do by hand. You can also get free themes to change it, or just use it as it is, or upgrade it later.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't know about the themes with bootstrap, but then again it's been a while since I actively looked at it. I see now it's evolved some and there are more visually appealing versions out than the vanilla.

Cheers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Yes definitely. Templates are great for this. Its the fastest way for you to get a site up and begin promoting your business.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the response! Do you have a favorite vendor/gallery that sells?

<comment><USER12> I've used themeforest a couple times

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You can check

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

</comment><comment><USER14> An inexpensive wrapbootstrap theme is the way to go, I think.</comment>


From OO to Lisp style - <AUTHOR> http://www.nsa.be/index.php/eng/Blog/From-OO-to-Lisp-style-structuring-my-Clojure-Jwt-app <comment><USER2> Sorry, but I'd want to write code this way why? I mean no disrespect, but this code is completely meaningless to read. What is the motivation to use such a language for this application...esoterica?</comment>


The Hail Mary Cloud And The Lessons Learned - <AUTHOR> http://bsdly.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-hail-mary-cloud-and-lessons-learned.html

<comment><USER2> There's an additional trick possible to dissuade these types of attacks, but I'm not sure if everyone is up to that type of dedication.

I once worked with an admin who would setup a script to enable SSH passthrough on the firewall (also OpenBSD) at a specific time of day, but never the same time. Once connected in the allowed window and he finished his business, he would reset the timer for another time of day (or perhaps several days to a week later if he's going to be away for a while).

It's a bit like the timed bank vault where even the manager couldn't open it until the timer on the door allowed it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't understand this sentence at the end of keys section

> And I'll let you in on a dirty little secret: you can even match on > interface in your sshd config for things like these

I don't get the secret. Only allow logins from certain IP ranges for each user/key?

<comment><USER4> I haven't tried it, but perhaps you can allow passwords from an interface that's internal, while requiring keys from the outside?

Not much gain. Keys (plus good passphrases, plus a decent manager) are a big win.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you find yourself in need of iptables blocking large numbers of discontinuous networks and/or hosts -- a very large blacklist, for instance -- you need ipset, from ipset.netfilter.org</comment>


Ask HN: Continue startup or pursue Aerospace Engineering? - <AUTHOR>

It's all in the title, but, here's some background: I've recently co-founded a growing and successful software startup. I'm completely self-educated except for the time spent in high school and have had a desire for some time to pursue Aerospace Engineering... It would take a lot of community college commitment before I can meet the prerequisites to enter a 4 year (or more) institution.
I've got cold feet because this startup is doing well and my trajectory looks very good - throwing college into the mix could only amplify the stress. Some of my thoughts were to take only one or two classes a semester, but considering I have about three years of fulltime community college before I can get to a 4 year, that thought doesn't sound so fun.
So, I suppose I'm asking for some admonition (options? non-matriculating?) and comfort because ultimately making money will win over going to school as it is what pays the bills and is already making me passive income. But I am afraid of getting lost in that "settled down" track (if I'm building a startup I suppose I shouldn't be afraid of that).
Meh, mostly just thinking out loud - any input is appreciated, particularly from those HN'ers that have matriculated through an Aerospace degree or are in the industry! <comment><USER2> Did you finish high school?

Besides a high school degree or a G.E.D., 4 year colleges, including engineering ones, don't require prerequisites. They are unlike graduate school programs in that gaining admission to an average engineering school requires nothing more than taking typical high school courses(Precalc, English, Physics, etc.) and landing decent grades in them. You don't need to spend years at a community college - just jump right into engineering, if that's what you decide.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did finish high school, but I hadn't even finished Alg2; I've shored up my math in recent years through self-education - through Algebra1-2 and some Trig, but I would have to take at least three semester's worth of mathematics classes in order to meet the prereqs for the community college's associates of engineering...

I've thought too, that economically it would make more sense for me to continue working on my startup and be able to pay for school later. Whilst maybe shoring up my math with one class per semester till I'm ready for the real deal.

<comment><USER2> The two ways I see a community college worth the effort are by 1.) saving money and 2.) only if all your credits can be applied to your 4 year degree. But, why even get an associates, when you can jump right into a 4 year degree, taking a few remedial classes(if available) to get you up to speed. Also, sometimes, by talking with a college directly, they can wave some high school pre-reqs for tests showing your competency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Yeah, I'd go straight to the 4 year if you can handle that economic hit. Having a successful start-up on your resume should help you get into a top program.

<comment><AUTHOR> You mean, wait for a few years (saving up?) and then just go straight into a four year? Maybe doing a class on the side here and there to prepare? That's the direction I'm leaning in.</comment></comment>


Former Hacker: Microsoft More Secure Than Apple, Adobe - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/194686/hacker_says_microsoft_secure.html <comment><USER2> Marc's not saying anything that 80+% of people working in software security haven't been saying for years. Nothing against Marc, just, this isn't controversial. Of course they are.

<comment><USER3> Many mac owners I know repeatedly tell me that they are impervious to viruses. This belief is quite widespread.

<comment><USER4> In my office we have email virus scanners, network virus scanners, and virus scanners on all the PCs and servers. You know what they are all looking for? Windows viruses. I'm probably more advanced than most Mac users, I don't enter my password at the request of every prompt and I read the file manifest for each installer. Mac owners are know they are not impervious. Most wouldn't know what to do if their Mac was infected with a virus. But they know there are far juicier targets than OSX.

A virus hasn't been built yet to take a Mac down. What you have is a bunch of hypothetical lab scenarios of how it could be done, and 0 real world data.

Companies are paying crackers with $2000 Macbook Pros while real money is being made ($millions) writing PC viruses. OSX doesn't need to be more secure than Windows 7 (it should be the goal though). It just needs to be more secure than 90% of the PCs out there running XP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For what it's worth, the cover of "Writing Secure Code 2" has a quote from Bill Gates "Required reading at Microsoft." On my very first day at MS I was handed a copy and told to read it (and I did). Our code also went under strict security reviews and just about any refactoring, bug fix, anything that potentially affected security had to be reviewed too.

</comment><comment><USER6> _The only reason Apple gets little increase in security is because they're running on top of a Unix-based operating system and they can take advantage of some of the things that have been done for them._

Am I misreading this, or is he saying these advantages Apple has don't count because they're playing on easy mode with their OS design?

<comment><USER7> No, he's saying Apple got a basic level of security for free but if they don't fix their broken security auditing the issue will creep up on them (and their users) as they gain market share.

I use Unix as well, on the server and on the desktop. But that doesn't automatically make all my code secure. What made Unix more secure than the original Windows was a particular attitude. An attitude that Apple doesn't have (or maybe didn't have until very recently).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yes, but Apple has a smaller install base so they are targeted less often. In practice, I think you are more secure on OSX at the moment. If their install base grows, I expect that will change.

</comment><comment><USER9> PCs are more secure, while Macs are safer.

<comment><USER10> Can you explain how security does not lead to safety in this case?

<comment><USER11> I think what was meant was:

Even though Macs may be less secure than Windows, there is significantly less malware targeted at Macs, so a Mac is relatively 'safe' for an average user.

On the other hand, if you're running the server for a bank - where you expect to get constantly hit by crackers looking for an exploit - Windows would probably stand up better than a Mac.

<comment><USER12> But if you're running security for a bank and you are depending on host-based security, you are in trouble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Oh, RLY? Tell this to all those botnets.. Ah, it is pcworld..

<http://www.milw0rm.com/platforms/windows>

<comment><USER14> So because banks are robbed more than my home, they are less secure? Don't think so...

<comment><USER13> I'm not sure this is a correct analogy. Lot of MS technology is defective/insecure by design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Marc Maiffret...now works trying to find security flaws in Microsoft's software...". I wonder who pays him? No surprises as to why he finds Microsoft more secure than Apple and Adobe.

<comment><USER16> FireEye (<http://www.fireeye.com/company/management.html>)

I took a quick look at the company's products, and I don't really see how he stands to benefit by convincing people Microsoft is more secure than its competitors.

Fill me in if you see something I missed.</comment></comment>


Physicists might have created quantum entanglement in bacteria (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/science/2018/10/29/physicists-might-have-created-quantum-entanglement-in-bacteria/ <comment><USER2> the experiment is here:

[https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2399-6528/aae224/...](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2399-6528/aae224/pdf) [PDF]

from this page:

[https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2399-6528/aae224/...](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2399-6528/aae224/meta) [HTML]

</comment><comment><USER3> TLDR; we shined a light at some bacteria and according to the rules of quantum mechanics those (atoms inside) bacteria are now entangled with the photons that [hit/didn't hit] them.

Snore.

</comment><comment><USER4> and Newton created gravity</comment>


Ask HN: Why are phone trees and call waiting still horrible in 2020? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Because nobody has made an app or service that maps them and automatically bypasses them. It should be possible to do but a bit expensive

</comment><comment><USER3> Because people don't want to provide support. I absolutely hate worthless phone trees, just give me a self service portal.</comment>


Path Graph – Pretty visualizations for ray tracing algorithms - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/daseyb/pathgraph <comment><USER2> ObZenPhotonGarden: [http://zenphoton.com/](http://zenphoton.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> There's also [https://benedikt- bitterli.me/tantalum/tantalum.html](https://benedikt- bitterli.me/tantalum/tantalum.html) and a great writeup on how it's done: [https://benedikt-bitterli.me/tantalum/](https://benedikt- bitterli.me/tantalum/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Well I had fun with it [http://i.imgur.com/EaQBYHX.png](http://i.imgur.com/EaQBYHX.png)</comment>


Some things I've learnt about public speaking - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jgc.org/2013/06/some-things-ive-learnt-about-public.html <comment><USER2> For public speaking, I have a theory of what "confidence" is. It's pretty simple: confidence is _actually knowing_ what you're about to do. Public speaking is scary because there are so many things that people haven't accounted for.

1\. Know your subject. This is usually the easy one. Know exactly how you came to your conclusions, and why it's valid. You can defend the hell out of it if you need to, and you can honestly engage with useful criticism.

2\. Know what you're going to say. This comes from practice. Are you worried about time? Practice and time yourself. Are you worried about how you look? Practice and video it and watch it. Are you worried about sounding stupid? Practice and record and listen to it. Get someone else to listen to it.

3\. Know your audience. This is the hardest one. It comes from experience. What does your audience care about? How can you move your audience from where they are to where you want them to be? Get to know them. Become familiar with who they are. This is why talking with your friends is easy, but an auditorium of strangers is scary. This is also why making eye contact with different audience members is helpful. You need to respect your audience, and also believe that your audience respects you.

This was a bit of a brain dump (my best write-up has been lost to /dev/null, unfortunately), but hopefully you get the idea. I suspect this would serve as a good core to learning public speaking, though.

<comment><USER3> I recently read "The Naked Ape" and a theory discussed there, is that public speaking is actually an acutely unnatural scenario which we are not well evolved to cope with.

To stare at someone is generally a threatening gesture, certainly there are many social cues about when it is appropriate to maintain a fixed gaze, and if a stare is held to long or without reciprocal give-and-take then it is usually interpreted as threatening/aggressive.

Now think about public speaking - 100's or 1000's of people all staring at you, the speaker, at the same time. It's no wonder this triggers a fear (or fight/flight) response in most people.

It's also worth considering, in our distant primate past, we are used to communicating with only a handful of other people at a time, outside of the context of tribal warfare.

I'd be interested if anyone has any more recent research / theories on this.

<comment><USER2> > Now think about public speaking - 100's or 1000's of people all staring at > you, the speaker, at the same time. It's no wonder this triggers a fear (or > fight/flight) response in most people.

This is true for all public performance, though. Sure, in a football game, maybe it's just triggering all of their fight responses, but that doesn't explain the downtime between plays. Stage performers of every kind have to deal with this. And so on and so on.

I'm not suggesting that you can snap your fingers and lose your fear of public speaking: I'm saying that you can develop confidence. What's the point of a rehearsal, after all, other than to have something safe and ritualized that you can fall back on in case of wetting your pants? The things I'm suggesting aren't easy. They're quite demanding, in fact; you're not going to be able to get to know most audiences except vaguely and through repeated exposure.

> To stare at someone is generally a threatening gesture, certainly there are > many social cues about when it is appropriate to maintain a fixed gaze, and > if a stare is held to long or without reciprocal give-and-take then it is > usually interpreted as threatening/aggressive.

There are ways to deal with this. My suggestion is essentially to learn how to break the ice. Give them reasons to laugh or applaud, which fills you up with positive emotion. Get them to talk to their neighbors, which breaks the staring effect. Focus and engage with random audience members throughout the talk. Pace, slowly, which is a posturing response.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A few things I'd add that aren't directly related to the presentation itself, though the things could give you more confidence. It also keeps the audience from sitting there while you try to work around a single point of failure.

1\. If you need slides, code or other digital assets, have them on your laptop, on a USB key, and a DVD. One or more of those will break, and you'll just fire up the alternate and go on your way. It's one less thing to worry about, and therefore: more confidence.

2\. Prepare for anything to go wrong. If at all possible, know your presentation well enough, and practice it enough, that you could do it without any computing hardware and still make it at least somewhat compelling. It's unlikely that all of the equipment will die, but something might. Your laptop won't boot, borrow a computer and use what's on the USB key. The projector won't work? Just read it off your laptop and make do. Etc. I give hardware about 30 seconds to co-operate and then just say "screw it" and go on. No reason for the audience to sit there while I try to figure out which key combination switches video to go to the projector. Unfortunately, being able to just go on when a piece of HW goes awry comes from practice, I think, unless you're just a really confident speaker who can't be flustered.

3\. Don't change your user account password the morning of a presentation. Your machine will lock and under the heat of the stage lighting you'll be rendered unable to remember your new password. Or so I've been told. But see #2. You're such a presentation boss that you didn't need to login to your machine anyway.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm an academic and attend conferences maybe 3-4 times year, as well as lecturing. I see a lot of bad talks. Point one is crucial for me. I'll go over the actual talk or lecture 5-10 times beforehand, more if I'm nervous for whatever reason.

It can help to have a live audience for your practice talk, but it's not necessary. Saying the words out loud lets you know _exactly_ how long the talk is, and where your intended flow breaks down and what you need to fix. You'll likely speak faster on the day, but your guide this way is much better than even thinking-through the talk and producing slides.

The difference between a talk that is well practised and a talk that has not been practised can be the difference between engaging follow-on discussions and the audience falling asleep. It can be the difference between an invitation every year and never being invited to participate again.

I partially disagree with the last part about having a structure though. If you are talking for an hour or more, letting the audience know when there will be a natural break in the talk can be useful; if you know which pieces of the talk will be most interesting, you can save your best attention for those. Everyone needs a break from the concentration of listening well and deliberately building a break into the middle of the lecture can work even better.

If you're only talking for 15 minutes then I agree that a ToC is pointless. I always flag where I'm going beforehand verbally though. I tend to summarise with three major things that should be taken from the talk body; maybe I'll bring in three key slides at the end copied from the talk body depending on the talk. At the end I want everyone to know what I consider to be the most important parts of the talk.

<comment><USER6> I personally find that I talk substantially faster in front of an audience than in private. Therefore if I practice for myself, I do not get a sense of how fast I'll actually be.

<comment><USER2> This is fairly a widespread and well-known phenomenon. I'd suggest that you start timing the difference and tack on the appropriate multiplier.

<comment><USER7> I got told years ago to practice talking in front of an audience of stuffed animals. Practice making eye contact with them, etc. and pace your timing as if they were real people. As corny as it is, it's helped me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Good stuff here!

Here's some disparate, but good advice I've received over the years:

1\. Imagine your audience is comprised of people you love and are excited to see and spend time with. This is the opposite of the whole picture-your- audience-naked thing, and tends to actually put you in the right frame of mind: calm, kind, genuine.

2\. Practice pre-speaking breathing exercises. Controlled exhalation tends to calm the spiking physiological events that come with nervousness (e.g. increased heart rate, shaky voice, sweating). If you can practice this often before you speak, you can quickly calm those physical responses when you actually need to.

3\. Prepare and Review... your audience. A core principle of teaching is that education is mostly review. In your presentation, always begin by preparing your audience for what you are going to teach them, review material at key points before you move on to other things, then review everything again before you conclude. Never give your audience an opportunity to get lost.

4\. Don't over-estimate what your audience knows (this tends to come with under estimating the value of what you know and are going to share). Take time to build concepts and review them and you build your arguments. Keep it simple. No jargon.

5\. Don't underestimate what your audience knows. Balance your material with a solid foundation of simple, approachable stuff and pepper it with things that stretch your audience's minds. The balance is key here, but never assume your audience is not smart enough to track with you.

That's just off the top of my head...

</comment><comment><USER9> Honest question: what's the point of cloudflare if it can't keep a basic content site up? I feel like I've seen quite a few of these branded error messages that have made me curious.</comment>


Ask HN: How is karma calculated? - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone, I was just wondering how karma is calcutated here at HN.
I was sitting at -42 karma, over a dumb comment I made that was heavily downvoted. I posted a link today, that has not been upvoted at the time of this writing, and I'm now back at 1 karma.
How did this happen? How is karma calculated? <comment><USER2> We implemented a moderation feature code-named "redemption" that puts a user's karma back at 1 when it got blasted by downvotes over something venial and they are clearly a good user otherwise.

We did this to try to compensate for some bad side-effects of the change we made earlier this year to count more downvotes than we used to. That was necessary and it worked, but like a lot of medicines, was not completely benign.

Our intention is for both of these things (the medicine and the compensating mechanism) to be temporary.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, that makes a lot of sense!</comment></comment>


Email alert about keywords in Hacker News - <AUTHOR> before I play myself with it, I ask if there is already some way to receive email alerts for the presence of new posts in Hacker news containing keywords.  Or maybe an already generic web service that check for content in the search page ..? <comment><USER2> HNWatcher [1] is a good one. Also HN Replies [2] for replies to threads you're in.

[1]: [https://www.hnwatcher.com/](https://www.hnwatcher.com/)

[2]: [http://www.hnreplies.com/](http://www.hnreplies.com/)

<comment><USER3> The SSL cert is broken for HN Watcher.

<comment><USER2> I have just reached out to the maintainers to let them know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> more on [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20822637](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20822637)

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://f5bot.com/](https://f5bot.com/)

<comment><USER5> This is brilliant. Using it myself for a while and support the creator on Patreon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You could use your preferred RSS client and configure a keyword alert.

<comment><USER5> Such as Blogtrottr for instance: [https://blogtrottr.com/subscriptions/](https://blogtrottr.com/subscriptions/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anyone kept track of the world's most prestigious hacking competition DEF CON Capture the Flag in Las Vegas. The winning players has been taking part in DEFCON for years. It is getting harder for new-comers to shine.

</comment><comment><USER8> [https://edavis.github.io/hnrss/](https://edavis.github.io/hnrss/)

</comment><comment><USER9> I've tried to use Google Alerts but it only occasionally works.

<comment><USER5> Google Alerts is fundamentally broken, I found. Never worked reliably for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a very good question. I was always thinking how it is possible to see at mosts posts first comments like "OP/author here". Most probably there ara good tools for this which I haven't figured yet.</comment>


When male CEOs have daughters, relative pay for women at their firms goes up - <AUTHOR> http://www4.gsb.columbia.edu/ideasatwork/feature/7219454/Like+Daughter,+Like+Father <comment><USER2> > The gender wage gap is a well-documented, persistent, and worldwide > phenomenon wherein women earn, on average, an estimated 9 to 18 percent less > than men who have the same job descriptions and equivalent education and > experience.

Interesting fact: in the U.S., single, childless, women under age 30 in urban areas earn more (10-20% in cities like New York) than single, childless, men under age 30. See: [http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274,00....](http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274,00.html).

This is not to undervalue the statistic presented in the article, but I'm always a bit wary of comparisons involving "equivalent education and experience." In Denmark, for example, 20-30% of women (depending on the study) work part-time, versus 8-10% of men. How do you compute "equivalent" experience with a part-time worker? Is 5 years of working an 80% work-week "equivalent" to 4 years of working full-time? Does a 30-year old woman who took 2 years off after college for childcare reasons have "equivalent" experience to a 28-year old man who did not? Mathematically that works out, but part-time work and time out of the workforce are death-blows to a resume, far out of proportion with the resulting differential in actual amount of experience.

I appreciate the ideas discussed in the article, but as the father of a daughter and the husband of a very ambitious woman, I have as slightly different perspective on the issue. Yes, it is important to avoid bias that results from the perceptions of men higher up in the hierarchy. At the same time, it's crucially important to look at the other irrationalities in the system. I think it's irrational that a women who takes a year off after the birth of a child is viewed by HR managers in a worse light than a man who took a year to backpack across Asia. I think it's irrational that men are never expected to be the ones who downshift their careers for a time to help raise kids. I think it's irrational that a period of downshifting is perceived as such a negative light in the first place.

<comment><USER3> "Interesting fact: in the U.S., single, childless, women under age 30 in urban areas earn more (10-20% in cities like New York) than single, childless, men under age 30."

For anyone reading along who is checking facts:

* The number from the "report" is actually 8%, not 10-20%.

* This is not a peer reviewed finding, it is a report by a company called Reach Advisors.

* The report, according to Time, says that in 147 of the 150 largest cities in the U.S the median income is 8% higher for women. That might mean that the differential is lower than 8% in those other 3 cities, or it might mean they filtered out 3 outlier cities, we don't know.

* That's 70 million people, about 22% of the population (I added up the numbers here: [http://www.citymayors.com/gratis/uscities_100.html](http://www.citymayors.com/gratis/uscities_100.html))

* Women age 20-30 comprise about a quarter of the working age women in this country (20-60) ballparked from here: [http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-03.pdf](http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-03.pdf)

* So when people say "young women in urban areas" we're talking about maybe 5-10% of women.

* And the numbers also only apply to childless women, but I have no way to find out what the child-having rates are amongst 20-something women in those cities. Looking at this map, I'd expect a strong majority of those women to be childless: [http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5419a5.htm](http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5419a5.htm) Regardless, any effect of discrimination-based-on-pregnancy-history would be hidden in this population.

* The report in question does not appear to control for educational experience, jobs, etc. So for all we know there are simply more college-educated women in cities than college educated men.

<comment><USER4> I don't see why you care what 6 year olds or retired women make, rendering your 5-10% meaningless. So really ~25% of women make more than there male counterparts.

<comment><USER3> No, there are roughly 20 million women age 20-30 and rougly 60 million aged 30-60, so ~25% of working women are under 30.

<comment><USER5> That's exactly what he just said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I believe the interpretation is wrong here.

The hard data:

                             Employee Wages
                                F      M
     Has firstborn sons:      +0.8%  -0.5%
     Has firstborn daughters: +1.1%  +0.6%

The story here is that when men have children, in general, female employees wages go up, by pretty much the same amount. However, when the firstborn is a boy, they are harder on men, and a little more respectful of women.

I'd personally interpret this as men becoming more respectful of women when they witness their wives undergoing childbirth. However, the more drastic effect of child gender can be seen on male employee wages. I suppose the CEO might be channeling frustration in child-rearing a boy on his male employees.

<comment><USER7> I think that you have a very good point. The article should have been something like "Child Effect: When male CEO wife has a child, relative pay for women goes up".

More of a "My wife gave birth and that helped me gain respect/comprehension towards women" than a "I have a daughter and I'm realizing she'll grow up in biased world, time to fix that beside me".

Not that it is a better or worse conclusion, but quite different IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think this is a phenomenon that extends well beyond pay. As members of congress have shown us, if you have a gay child you will go from a violent hate toward gays to a complete acceptance. If you need an abortion, abortions are somehow moral, even though they are the devils tool when used by others.

It's things like this that made me wish that as a society, we were better at putting ourselves in the other persons shoes and having our viewpoint be based on something other than our thoughtless, engrained "morality".

<comment><USER9> Do to others as you would have them do to you?

<comment><USER10> "Do unto others 20% better than you expect them to do to you, to correct for subjective error." \-- Paraphrased from Linus Pauling, apparently. [http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/138002-do-unto- others-20-bet...](http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/138002-do-unto- others-20-better-than-you-would-expect-them)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It is horrifying to read the comments here. In Germany, where I live, on average, a woman will earn less than a man IF EVERYTHING ELSE IS THE SAME. Here is the source (PDF, in German):

[https://www.destatis.de/DE/Publikationen/Thematisch/Verdiens...](https://www.destatis.de/DE/Publikationen/Thematisch/VerdiensteArbeitskosten/Verdienstunterschiede/VerdienstunterschiedeMannFrau5621001069004.pdf?__blob=publicationFile)

No, this cannot be easily dismissed, yes they corrected for all the obvious stuff, no they don't have an agenda. This is a report by the official statistics bureau for Germany. Maybe the data for other countries is not as good, but why do so many people here immediately snap into backlash mode without considering the possibility that this could actually be an existing pay bias?

<comment><USER12> I agree with your point that people need to be careful to not dismiss the gender gap issue (which certainly exists for anyone over a certain age)

I have found on Reddit and here that the top comments are almost always against the original article if there is any way to view the conclusion differently.

I do not believe it is a systematic problem, it allows you to quickly get a hold of two conflicting viewpoints quickly.

I took the top comment to be "It is extremely difficult to mitigate factors when it comes to the gender gap, especially lost work time due to child care", he then quoted a study where a differential comparison saw at least one example of the opposite gender inequality.

Additionally the gender gap is rooted in cultural reasons, so comparing different countries is different. Specifically the existence of a certain gender gap in Germany does not mean such a gap exists in the US.

<comment><USER11> You make good points. I second the last thing you brought up: Germany has one of the worst gender pay gaps in Europe, so that the situation in the US is most likely better than here, not worse.

However, I'd like to point out that my criticism was not aimed at the top comment but at many of the comments here in "the middle". What shocked me was not so much that people hold a view opposed to mine, but the dismissive tone of some posts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "The study focused exclusively on male CEOs rather than female CEOs: men account for over 90 percent of the CEOs in the authors' study and an even larger proportion of the CEOs of large companies around the world,..."

Fair enough; data set might be too small.

"while female CEOs would presumably already be attuned to possible gender wage inequity, consciously or not, by virtue of being women."

But this is not a reasonable conclusion. One hopes it's the reporter interpolating; otherwise the investigators have a rather rosy view of the world. Gender discrimination, to the extent it exists, seems to be rather strong in women as well.

They may be measuring a certain effect, but leaving out some interesting data.

</comment><comment><USER14> > nature randomly determines the gender of each child

Some evidence emerging that this isn't true: [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130710182941.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130710182941.htm)

People that tend to have more female babies: nurses. People that tend to have more male babies: CEOs.

Could low testosterone (or low "fitness," per article) in a CEO cause him to have more daughters? Could it also cause relative pay for women to go up in their company? Why would that be?

</comment><comment><USER15> As with all preliminary research findings, this finding (reported here in a blog post from early 2011) needs replication before we can be sure it is reliable fact about the world.

[http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html](http://norvig.com/experiment- design.html)

As a father of three boys before I had my daughter, I really, truly desired to have a daughter in part to improve the "consciousness-raising" environment in my home both for myself and for my three boys. Perhaps I really have had a little bit of "male chauvinist pig" thinking on my own part counteracted by observing my daughter grow up at home. (My wife, on her part, grew up with four older brothers and only one (older) sister in her birth family, and she finds it very easy to take the male point of view.)

What exactly could be done about this from the public policy point of view? Family sizes are smaller than ever--which means that some CEOs have only daughters, and no sons, but other CEOs who have children have only sons, and will not go out of their way to have daughters just to balance their parenting experience. Other than differences in family structure, which thus far are usually haphazard more than planned, it's not completely clear what life experiences can be provided to the current generation of business leaders or the next generation of young people growing up to make sure that they have a balanced view (and what would that be?) about the roles of men and women in the society of the future.

<comment><USER16> _> it's not completely clear what life experiences can be provided to the current generation of business leaders or the next generation of young people growing up to make sure that they have a balanced view (and what would that be?) about the roles of men and women in the society of the future._

One option could be to seek out education on the topic? I'm thinking of in- house seminars where speakers are invited to address the topic and provide coaching, particularly for executives. Of course, that assumes that the executives are interested and recognize the issue in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This, alongside the recent "I put Mr. on my CV and got a job" is fascinating. I have had to rethink my own -isms over the years and its amazing just how prejudiced a right-on liberal has turned out to be - its almost as if I evolved in a totally different environment.

<comment><USER18> Note that plural of anecdote is not data. Neither is singular. I.e. how often do you read articles "I put Mr. on my CV and I still have no job" on the front page of HN? Clear setup for survivorship bias here[1].

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> When was the last time you saw the CEO of a company decide how much they pay their employees, especially in a huge Fortune 500 company?

Usually that's HRs job. Sure budgets are set high-up, but I think it's ridiculous to say that CEOs have a big impact in salaries.

<comment><USER20> From the article:

> The researchers also found that these effects were strongest at firms with > 50 or fewer employees, which they attribute to the fact that CEOs at smaller > firms are typically more directly involved in making decisions that affect > the pay of individual workers than CEOs at much larger firms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The 'wage gap' actually mainly exists because women work less hours per year (up to ~20% less), and because they they work in different industries, and on the whole do different jobs. There's no discrimination.

<comment><USER22> > There's no discrimination.

Or rather that the discrimination is cultural and leads to life choices that make the wage gap structural.

For example: We live in a culture that devalues young girls who excel in math, leading to lower achievement in this area[1]. By the time they go to college they choose differently than men and "work in different industries"

[1] [http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2096370?uid=3739856&ui...](http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2096370?uid=3739856&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21102535661477) for one example

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is there really a causal link here? They don't say anything about the size of the firms other than that they excluded very small firms. For medium to large size companies, how involved is the CEO in setting the salary for each employee?

<comment> peter-fogg What's more, it seems that a small wage increase (say, for the next hire after a CEO's child is born) could have an outsize effect on average pay at the company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> "Does that reflect an injustice? Many say no, arguing that women earn less because they take time off to care for children or elderly parents (and thus have less seniority) or accept lower pay in return for more flexible working arrangements. Women also tend to go into lower-paying lines of work, shunning higher-paying technical fields. It's easy to caricature this view (dirndls versus Visigoths, etc), but there may be some truth in it. Some research suggests that when women behave as men do--not having babies, mainly--the income gap largely disappears. If so (I won't claim the matter has been definitively settled), the question facing women is a stark one: What do you want, kids or cash?"

[1] [http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2411/are-women- paid...](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2411/are-women-paid-less- than-men-for-the-same-work)

</comment><comment><USER20> I'd be very interested to see the mechanism. I can't imagine any company had a "pay women less" policy that got revoked. So what happened? Are women being brought into management more? It seems possible that a single promotion by the CEO could have major follow-on effects there. Had there been a subconscious tendency to shut down ideas that had women's names on them? Did the company culture move away from 60 hour weeks now that the CEO wants to get home early, allowing women (who are generally less willing to do 60 hours) to thrive?

I'm assuming the study conductors were competent statisticians, so there's a real effect and it pretty-much has to be causality as indicated.

</comment><comment><USER25> Might be worthwhile to point out that even if it should turn out to be true, this doesn't imply that male CEOs were paying their female employees unfairly before they had daughter. It would just show that they paid women more afterwards than before (which could be discriminating against men, for example). Perhaps they even just paid men less, or earned less themselves (perhaps daughters require more time spent with family or whatever), thus dragging down the averages. I have not read the actual PDF yet, though, only the newspaper summary.

</comment><comment><USER26> This study was just Denmark, no?

It would be interesting to see if the data holds elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER27> Interesting that having a daughter makes CEOs more mindful of equal pay, when they already had a woman close to them that they should be looking out for - their wife/partner (I'm assuming gay CEOs with kids don't form a significant percentage of the sample).

Is there any data on how CEOs and their partners share childcare responsibilities? I'd guess that most of the load is shouldered by their other half, given the kind of hours CEOs tend to work (especially in early stage companies).

</comment><comment><USER28> Can any CEOs that intentionally pay women less where everything is equal chime in and explain why?

\---

In my experiences, I believe women are brought in under equal pay but in small teams and companies they are relied on to handle more responsibilities; perhaps even sometimes being considered "senior" when they aren't promoted to that level.

I can't think of a single person who would be dumb enough to consider someone's genitalia when determining pay rate.

<comment> peter-fogg Many forms of discrimination are much more subtle than "this candidate is a woman, so I'll offer her $10,000 less than a man". That's why the authors chose Denmark as an area of study; since the country is (apparently) a fairly egalitarian place, any explicit biases should have a small effect, and anything left over is unconscious discrimination.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Cheney had a gay, female child... why is he still such a cold-hearted bastard?

<comment><USER30> Is he actually, or is that the persona of the character he plays on TV?

<comment><USER31> Given that, at this point, there's no incentive for him to be a bastard besides the pleasure derived from it, it seems like that's actually just who he is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> _The gender wage gap is a well-documented, persistent, and worldwide phenomenon wherein women earn, on average, an estimated 9 to 18 percent less than men who have the same job descriptions and equivalent education and experience._

If women were 18% more effective then men, then this is a surefire way to get rich:

Step 1: Start a business and employ only women

Step 2: Crush your competitors by being 18% more efficient

Heck, even if you could find a way to cut costs by 1% in an industry, that's huge.

<comment><USER33> So you're proposing that because women given 18% less in wages that we should take advantage of that fact, underpay them, and contribute more to gender inequality in the workplace?

I'd love to see what your female coworkers think of this post.

<comment><USER34> He is proposing _that it could be done_ , and thus anyone who doesn't care about the ethical implications and wants to get rich would be doing it. That nobody is doing it, despite no shortage of unethical people who want to get rich, suggests that it is not true.

<comment><USER33> >suggests that it is not true

I doubt this. See the HN post from a few days ago ("I put Mr. on my CV and got a job"). It would seem that employers not only pay their females employees less, but have little faith in them to get the job done, thus they wouldn't hire them in the first place.

<comment><USER34> There's no room for doubt, really. It _does_ suggest that. It does not prove, so you can certainly doubt the _conclusion_ , of course.

There really doesn't seem to be any alternative besides these three:

\- Women are not underpaid or more efficient.

\- There is not a noticeable number of unethical people seeking to get rich.

\- People are getting rich by hiring lots of women and outcompeting everybody else who prefers men.

The last two don't look true to me, which _suggests_ that the first one is true. I certainly could be wrong about the assumptions or conclusion, but it does suggest that.

<comment><USER33> These "unethical people seeking to get rich" could also outsource all jobs to third world countries and get their work done pennies on the dollar -- yet a lot of them don't. It doesn't look good for your company when you take advantage of people in plain sight.

<comment><USER35> > yet a lot of them don't

But many of them did...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Gmail, suddenly: TLS Negotiation failed, the certificate doesn't match the host - <AUTHOR> https://support.google.com/mail/thread/38336515 <comment><USER2> Looks like Google is now validating the TLS certificate received from the mailserver. So the hostname of the SMTP server provided in the GMail settings has to match the certificate provided by the server. I just updated the hostname in GMail and the problem is fixed now!

<comment><USER3> Yeah I also have similar problem, how did you solved it (

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So for godaddy, where the securesever.net domain is on the tls certificate, how do i configure my outgoing which used to be mydomain.com but now fails?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> My cert, and many others mentioned on that thread, have the proper CN. It is self-signed. Gmail seems to be randomly and intermittently rejecting it.</comment>


AFK–A game for the Digital Revolution - <AUTHOR> http://en-afk.spintank.fr/

<comment><USER2> Neat, clean design. Don't have the time to browse all cards though, and some of the main concepts (AKA "Mobile", yes I know how obvious this may sound) that you would expect being discussed seem to be missing.</comment>


Issue and Pull Request templates - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/2111-issue-and-pull-request-templates <comment><USER2> There is already a way of doing this using the URL like: [https://github.com/jamesRaybould/go- mssqldb/issues/new?body=...](https://github.com/jamesRaybould/go- mssqldb/issues/new?body=%23%23%23%20Story%20%2F%20Task%0A%0A%23%23%23%20Value%0A%0A%23%23%23%20Acceptance%20Criteria%0A%20-%20%5B%20%5D%20%0A%0A%23%23%23%20Notes)

You can then add it as a simple href to the readme.md.

It also means that you can have multiple templates depending on what a user wants to do, just by having multiple links and changing the content of the `body` parameter.

Simplest way to get going on this is to use [http://urldecode.org](http://urldecode.org) to write the markdown you want and then hit the encode button, take the result and add it after `body=`

We also use it to auto-assign labels using `labels=` in the URL

<comment><USER3> Do you get many issues that don't use your template because people go to /issues and click the new issue button? When I create an issue with a project, I typically don't a link in readme.md.

<comment><USER4> You could combine it with the new feature and put a warning message into the default box saying to click one of the links in the README in order to get an issue through.

<comment><USER5> That is just... Why? That's such a UX failure I'm not entirely convinced you wreent being sarcastic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great job!

Next item, be able to star issues.

That would help a lot and we are able to avoid +1 comments.

<comment><USER7> Seems like this one is solved by showing the number of subscribers to an issue. I don't think this really needs to be a separate feature.

<comment><USER8> I think it makes sense to have a difference in meaning between "I want to be e-mailed updates about this" (subscribe) versus "I think this is important/valuable/necessary" (star/vote).

<comment><USER9> Devils advocate: if you think it is important, then why don't you want to know when it's fixed?

Starring instead of subscribing is basically the issues equivalent of "Hire, but not for this team". If you limit it to people who care enough to subscribe, you only get the people who actually are invested in it, and avoid the people who _think_ it should be fixed but who don't actually need it to be.

<comment><USER10>
        > why don't you want to know when it's fixed?

Knowing when it is fixed/closed is very much different than getting emails about every single comment going on about that issue.

Starring issues (as in Google Code Project Hosting) meant "I want to see this getting fixed" and subscribing issues on GitHub does not show anything like that. If I am not mistaken, you only see a list of people "participating" to an issue, you don't get to see list of people getting emails about that issue.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. Would be great to get an alert only when the issue is closed. That could also work as a rough voting system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Now I actually start to worry. Did anybody here ever have the problem of making people happy with a software project?

The usual complain goes like this "You need to do X because I want to be able to do Y." In the complainers mind there is the untested idea that having X will enable him to do Y which solves his unspoken problem Z that he isn't even aware off. The thing is, at this time you don't know Z. You don't know if Y is really solving Z. And you don't know if X is really solving Y. And neither does he. But if you want him to use your tools he doesn't need to worry about that as much as you.

What happens if you just go like "Okay, user wants X, here is X!" is that the users will continue to complain (maybe even more) because Z is still not solved, and because there was no testing and planning involved X is actually creating another problem Z2 that nobody had before. At least that's my experience with an open source project I managed for about 3 years.

What I found actually needs to happen is to discover Z and to discover a way to solve it in the context of the project (which other people may not be as aware of as you are), and with an at least minimized chance of creating more problems. Then this actual solution needs to be sold to the users, because they are not aware of Z, so they think they don't care that you solved Z. But only after doing all that people will stop complaining (not even remembering that there was a problem and how much pain you went through to solve it of course).

Hope that makes sense and explains why I start to worry now, when everybody starts cheering. What I hoped would happen is that you don't hear much about the suggested changes, some other changes happen a few weeks down the road, and then the complains stops without anybody noticing. A success would be that you don't read about github anymore after 1-2 months. People cheering and github saying "Hey we did X" is a really bad thing.

<comment> james-skemp I'm confused, probably because of too much variable usage in your comment.

If one or more of the variables were GitHub, or issue templates, then:

Don't be concerned. The user community listed grievances with some missing functionality. GitHub listened and implemented some. In this case without changing functionality for people who didn't want this. (So the person who likes the URL method can stick with that.)

Good on GitHub implementing something to help their users. Isn't that what we want? Or do you want then to ignore their community?

<comment><USER12> They implemented the wrong thing though. And now you ask "What's the right thing?" to which I will say "Nobody knows yet"

X = proposed solution by users, Y = guessed problem by users, Z = actual problem nobody knows about yet.

The proposed solution is only maybe a solution to the proposed problem, probably not. Because users won't go and try things out and then come to you and tell you what they found out. They have a feeling in their stomach and they tell you about it. The same goes for the problem they tell you about. It's maybe not their real problem but a symptom of another problem. You need to go and solve the actual problem.

Example: Patient (=user) goes to doctor (=github) and says "I have a headache (=Y), please give me some pills against headaches (=X)". Well, headaches can be because of lack of sleep, lack of water, too many worries, an infection, or maybe even cancer. Now the doctor's job is to figure out which of the actual problems it is. He talks to the user, does some analysis and figures out the actual problem is lack of water (=Z!!!). He tells the patient to drink more water (solving Z, Y is indirectly solved, and no word about X). Patient goes home, drinks more, is happy, doesn't come back to the doctor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well done Github. Simple and elegant solution that I hope will help people a lot.

</comment><comment><USER14> Kinda meh on adding it to the repo since it's yet another file I have to "manage" that isn't really part of the working code.

<comment><USER15> Would you seriously rather have it unversioned and untracked and managed with some random webpage on github?

<comment><USER16> Something only belongs in the same branch as the code if it should be forever tied to the same version as the other files in that branch.

Suppose I check out a project using a version from a year ago. Project maintainers would certainly not expect me to use last year's issue template, last year's preferred pull request layout and last year's rules for contributing! That is why shoving things into the "git" repository is a hack.

Having this stuff under _some_ revision control is useful but it could be a separate, parallel repository. Frankly, I think everything for project management should be in one repository, and everything for code and documentation should be in another, and GitHub should be able to use files from both to present a project site.

<comment><USER17> GitHub is always going to use the issue template that's on master, not the template from whichever version you happen to have checked out on your machine.

<comment><AUTHOR> Current file on master to boot. But what makecheck is saying is that only what's in current master matters, not what's in `feature/something-here` or in a commit tree from last year. So shoving it in the repo isn't really a good solution.

<comment><USER18> Having the templates in the repo at least gives you a degree of portability.

I'm guessing there isn't an "export issues" feature so the above point is moot.

I favour the portability.

<comment><USER19> Sure you can export issues from Github, easily.

[https://api.github.com/repos/rails/rails/issues](https://api.github.com/repos/rails/rails/issues)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > This is the first of many improvements to Issues and Pull Requests that > we're working on based on feedback from the community

So there is more to come

<comment><USER20> Geez. I would hope so. Too bad it took them the better part of half a decade to listen to users. I've already moved a number of my personal projects to Gitlab, Bitbucket or a self-hosted Gogs installation.

I've still got reasons to stick with Github for some projects, but it's not the new hotness it used to be.

$10 says the next new feature is voting on issues.

<comment><USER21> If the next feature is voting on issues then that would be great. They'd be implement Ling the features people are asking for.

<comment><USER3> GitHub had issue voting years ago and got rid of it because people hated it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The template is more for actual issues with the software than to-do lists/user grievances, the latter of which I see used more frequently in GitHub Issues. Maybe it's time to separate GitHub Issues into Issues and Discussion.

EDIT: Missed the fact that the feature is opt-in by the repo owner, which makes things more expected depending on the nature of the repo. Although now thinking about it, the separation is still not a bad idea.

<comment><USER23> I don't agree. I think this is a great step into encouraging users to follow a format when submitting issues. It would make it easier to add tags to these issues as well. Any other discussion can be submitted the same way, you'd just remove the template and start typing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed. Triaging issues which is a huge issue can now be simplified heavily with the usage of a bot that parses the template and tags issues.

This is a great step forward and I'm excited that GitHub is doing this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> github released an announcement: [https://github.com/blog/2111-issue-and-pull- request-template...](https://github.com/blog/2111-issue-and-pull-request- templates)

<comment><USER25> ... that's what the HN link is

<comment><USER26> The original link was to [https://github.com/dear-github/dear- github/issues/125](https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github/issues/125)

The link was changed to the GitHub blog post sometime in the past hour since _ikke_ commented.

<comment><USER27> Is there a way to check what was linked originally or do you just have to click the link before it's changed to know?

<comment><USER28> dang normally comments when he changes a link, as he did here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11120948](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11120948)

<comment><USER27> Ah, cheers. Didn't notice that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I have a PR open for Rust to use this. I and others are very skeptical in general, but there's some interesting discussion so far: [https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/31732](https://github.com/rust- lang/rust/pull/31732)

</comment><comment><USER30> I asked Craigslist to do this years ago for the "for sale" sections, so that people included the number of doors on a car, the color, etc., and the kind of heat in an apartment, and so on. Such a simple thing, and would make searching so much better, and the service in general better.

<comment><USER17> Craigslist has dedicated form fields for a lot of those things, which can then be used with search filters. The problem is that they aren't mandatory, and most users don't fill them in.

The side effect of this is that if you use the search filters, you risk missing out on a result which matches your criteria but lacks the metadata. (Craigslist doesn't have an option to search for only Blue AND Unspecified, so there's no good way to just hide the explicitly non-Blue cars.)

<comment><USER31> Allowing sellers not to fill out additional information that they easily could provides a useful signal to buyers about how well the transaction is likely to go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> pull_request_template.md also works.

<comment><USER33> >Issue template filenames are not case sensitive, and can have an extension such as .md or .txt.

<comment><USER3> colinodell posted that before the blog announcement when we only knew about issue_template.md. It was to point out that you can do this with pull requests as well, not that it was case insensitive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> So, the issue template is just a default text that individual users can modify, delete, or otherwise disregard?

<comment><USER35> Would you also like for it to ensure that all check boxes in your template are checked prior to submitting? Ask the user to please submit to a lie detector test? I think this is a completely reasonable solution to the problem and will cover the 99% case.

<comment><USER34> I'm not sure why you think I'd want that.

I do however feel like it's a temporary and half-hearted quick fix. If it were possible to add custom fields to the issue tracker, they could be used to sort and filter issues. They wouldn't have to be required, but maybe if you don't fill them in, your issue would be labeled "incomplete".

Since they're now asking people to go ahead and add a template file to their repos, it will make it more inconvenient to change this later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I want to know how this works: [http://gitmagic.io/](http://gitmagic.io/)

<comment><USER37> Send us an email at firstname.lastname@example.com and we will try to answer your questions :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> How does that work with branches ? Is there a master branch required to have this file, what if project doesn't have master branch ?

I think the concept of having a file in source code is flowed for DVCS unless you have so called "source" branch that you can define that is a default source of such information.

<comment><USER39> You can set the default branch [1] which will be shown on your repo's page and used by default for pull request.. I guess it should take the templates from that branch

[1] [https://help.github.com/articles/setting-the-default- branch/](https://help.github.com/articles/setting-the-default-branch/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Why isn't this in a separate branch akin to gh-pages, or a separate repository akin to the wiki data?

<comment><USER41> I think a hidden folder is a decent compromise.

>If you're worried about the added clutter in the root directory of your project, we also added support for a .github/ folder. You can put CONTRIBUTING.md, ISSUE_TEMPLATE.md, and PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md files in .github/ and everything will work as expected.

<comment><USER42> I think the `_TEMPLATE` is unnecessary and the `.github` folder a good compromise. However I'll take github listening to the community regardless. +1

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> The problem I have with this is, I don't want a template for the comment a contributor leaves on a PR; I want to display a message to them before they submit a PR. It's not a standard way to display messages, requiring users to read editable text (that has no clickable URLs) and then delete that text after they read it and submit.

<comment><USER27> Does CONTRIBUTING.md fulfil this requirement?

<comment><USER43> Thanks. Wasn't aware of that. Mostly fulfills the requirement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> It'd be interesting if it'd provide a separate input box for each section of the template – maybe even a graphical editor for lists if the template specifies a list.

</comment><comment><USER45> Well, it seems like the open letter is working!

I hope they address the other issues as fast as this one. Rating system is the next one on my list.

</comment><comment><USER46> I'm excited, but the PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md name is too long for root. What about PULL_REQUESTS.md and REPORT_ISSUES.md?

<comment><USER47> The article says:

> If you're worried about the added clutter in the root directory of your > project, we also added support for a .github/ folder. You can put > CONTRIBUTING.md, ISSUE_TEMPLATE.md, and PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md files in > .github/ and everything will work as expected.

So you can put them in `.github/` if you don't want them in root.

<comment><USER46> I read this, yes. In .github/ people will not see it, and is even more worrysome. It belongs to root, same as CONTRIBUTING.md

<comment><USER48> What's the use case of people seeing it? GitHub should be adding it automatically; issue reporters aren't copying-and-pasting the template manually. The only people who should really need to see the file itself are maintainers (or fork maintainers), unless I'm missing some use case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Doesn't seem to work on enterprise github yet. :(

<comment><USER50> GitHub Enterprise releases typically run a few months behind GitHub.com changes. You'll likely have to wait until GHE 2.6. Sorry!

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I'd like them to choose a folder name that isn't specific to a site. .github would look silly on hit lab but I like the idea of having a serrated folder.

<comment><USER52> Trying to use a GitHub only feature on GitLab would look equally silly... This is very much a GitHub specific implementation. It makes sense for it to be identified as such.

It would be nice if they used a specific branch a la gh-pages so that everyone's Git repos don't have to be polluted with GitHub specific files.

<comment><USER53> That's an interesting idea. Having something like a gh-config branch for all the configuration would keep it isolated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Url changed from [https://github.com/dear-github/dear- github/issues/125](https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github/issues/125) to the announcement post.

</comment><comment><USER55> What about attachments to issues? Using gist for it is simply annoying.

<comment><USER35> Attachments have been around since 2012: [https://help.github.com/articles/file-attachments-on- issues-...](https://help.github.com/articles/file-attachments-on-issues-and- pull-requests/)

[https://github.com/blog/1347-issue- attachments](https://github.com/blog/1347-issue-attachments)

<comment><USER55> Limited to images? Am I supposed to take a screenshot of some huge error dump? A workaround is to use gists. But it's not a good workflow.

<comment><USER56> GitHub also supports txt and other common document formats: [https://github.com/blog/2061-attach-files-to- comments](https://github.com/blog/2061-attach-files-to-comments)

<comment><USER55> Ah, that's a recent addition. Thanks for the pointer. Does it work for bugs? The post mentions pull request comments.

<comment><USER3> Yes. It works on issues too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> There's a special place in hell for people that make jokes and post massive animated memes in issues.

<comment><USER58> Heaven must be a real party then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> This sounds like more 'enterprise' bureaucracy. Coming soon, overly complicated paperwork.

<comment><USER60> If you've ever managed a big OSS project you'd not think of it like 'enterprise' bureaucracy but a time safer. If OSS users can't even be asked to fill out a minimum amount of information based on a template, then I have zero interest spending my free time helping out.

<comment><USER61> Yes, OSS users have a very wide gamut — for everyone who sends a pull request with good troubleshooting and a patch, there must be half a dozen people who click New Issue, submit minimal information and, if you're lucky, come back a couple of days later and acknowledge that the real problem was a hacked up local install, using a 5 year old version of a core dependency, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> talk about moving slow.

two years and that's what we get? meanwhile my bigger diffs are still garbage. and we have to use other companies to have a simple agile board... and don't even get me started on decent branch management and rebases...

sigh. really hate that my employer buys that</comment>


New Chrome Extension, Musicality: Control playback from any tab for any provider - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/musicality/fjiolbglibkahkipcdgeepdfdgfkdbee

<comment><AUTHOR> I shouldn't claim any provider. Currently supports: Amazon Cloud Player, Bandcamp (artist/album view only), Google Music, Grooveshark, HypeMachine, iHeart Radio, Last.FM, Mixcloud, Mog, Pandora, Rdio, Slacker, Songza, SoundCloud, Spotify (web player only), and Xbox Music.

Looking for feedback!</comment>


Ask HN: Any good font which shows clear difference of text "oO01lLiI"? - <AUTHOR> I can see only "Consolas" font can show clear difference of characters "oO01lLiI". any other fonts? <comment><USER2> (Iosevka Term, Iosevka Term Slab) [http://typeof.net/Iosevka/](http://typeof.net/Iosevka/)

[https://damieng.com/blog/2008/05/26/envy-code-r- preview-7-co...](https://damieng.com/blog/2008/05/26/envy-code-r- preview-7-coding-font-released)

(M+ 1m) [https://mplus-fonts.osdn.jp/about-en.html](https://mplus- fonts.osdn.jp/about-en.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Ubuntu Mono [https://design.ubuntu.com/font/](https://design.ubuntu.com/font/)

Changed the font of Hacker News to Ubuntu Mono a while ago with [https://github.com/darkreader/darkreader](https://github.com/darkreader/darkreader) and can see the difference between those characters in your post quite clearly

</comment><comment><USER4> Personal favorites: Roboto Mono, Hack / DejaVu Sans Mono, Fira Code / Fira Mono, Source Code Pro.

I like Inconsolata, but in my opinion, its 'l' looks an awful lot like a '1'.

</comment><comment><USER2> [https://github.com/BourgeoisBear/DaddyTimeMono](https://github.com/BourgeoisBear/DaddyTimeMono)

<comment><USER5> I wouldn't use this for my terminal or source code, personally, but I think this font would look fantastic for old-school JRPG text.

<comment><USER2> Check it out at a smaller point size than the example. Hinting makes it less ornamented at smaller sizes (< 11pt).

<comment><USER5> (then I won't be able to see it; I work at 14pt)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Input by Font Bureau: [http://input.fontbureau.com/](http://input.fontbureau.com/)

</comment><comment><USER7> I use OCR A as my terminal font - it does a good job of character variation and also looks retro cool.

</comment><comment><USER8> Hack is quite good.

[https://sourcefoundry.org/hack/](https://sourcefoundry.org/hack/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Inconsolata is my go-to code font, hands down.

Libertine for text, Biolinum for labels.

</comment><comment><USER10> ...most of those fonts only look good on Retina displays...

</comment><comment><USER11> Source</comment>


Encoding Animated GIFs into Pure CSS - <AUTHOR> https://matthewrayfield.com/articles/encoding-animated-gifs-into-pure-css/ <comment><USER2> Brilliant. Not very practical or has any real use cases as you point but still brilliant!</comment>


The verge 404 page: Hints of what'll be covered?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/rss.xml

<comment><AUTHOR> Unforunately the 404 page itself is protected but the rss.xml request leads you to the 404 page where you can find the categories. Can anyone else do some probing in? I tried using curl to bypass stuff but it kept redirecting me to the password redirect url</comment>


See who has OAuth Tokens to Access Your Google Account - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/accounts/IssuedAuthSubTokens <comment><USER2> This is a list of sites I sign into using Google as my OpenId provider. That's not the same as having "Access [to] Your Google Account".

<comment><USER3> not only this. also all other privileges (contacts, gmail, analytics) you've shared with apps (maybe you don't).

<comment><USER2> I'm not naive enough to think that Google is looking out for the little guy in the privacy arena, but I assume this isn't the default (opt-out) behavior. Anyone have an authoritative link on this topic?

<comment><USER4> No, they don't give any permissions with OpenID. This page lists both OpenID and OAuth-using services. For an example of a service that uses OAuth, try LaTeX Lab (<http://docs.latexlab.org/>), which uses OAuth to get access to your Google Docs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thank you! I just revoked the authorization for most of the services that I wasn't using frequently but had signed-up one fine day.

</comment><comment><USER6> Unless I'm mistaken, some of those I only granted single use tokens to, so they don't _actually_ still have access.

</comment><comment><USER7> google.com — Google Calendar [ Revoke Access ]

Oh?

<comment><USER8> That's kind of weird, I don't think I have this in my access list, but I use calendar all the time.

edit:Wow, guess not

<comment><USER7> Looks like it automatically comes back if I revoke it.

<comment><USER9> I'm trying to get some attention from Google about this (potential) privacy issue. How can I be sure that "google.com" is my own Google account? Why does the authorization get automatically renewed after I revoke it, and without my consent? Why does a Google service require an additional authorization to access my account, and why doesn't Google provide any information about it? Worse, I have no way to confirm that it isn't someone else's account that have full access to my data. If it's the case, someone may have read my private calendars for months, and the only way to stop this would be to delete my whole Google accounts and the 80+ services associated with it.

This issue has reported 4 months ago here [http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=44a4a...](http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=44a4a8e6fbcf1656) and here <http://blogoscoped.com/forum/173175.html> (and I submitted a report at [http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/request.py?contac...](http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/request.py?contact_type=feedback)), but I haven't heard of any Google employee about it.

I'm 99.9% sure there's no privacy breach but I find troubling that they haven't reacted yet...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Thanks for this. It was very relevant to enter and just review my subscriptions. Tks

</comment><comment><USER8> What we need to identify are consequences of OAuthing to someone we don't want to. Anyone have a source on that?</comment>


Ask HN: Personal Website - <AUTHOR> I am working on building on my own website as an engineer. What does your personal website as an engineer look like.? What all do you showcase there.? <comment><USER2> [https://matansilver.com](https://matansilver.com)

It's only a couple articles, and by far the most useful part of this site has been that I can simply link people to my resume, and it will always be up to date. No need to worry about which version I gave which person. I'm no longer looking for jobs but it was very nice when I was. Besides that I have a couple small blog posts but I'm not sure how much value those provide, and the writing might not be great.

I'm working on a portfolio section of the site, where I will showcase some of my hardware and software projects. At the moment, the only portfolio-like page I have is the link to my Github profile.</comment>


Time to #DeleteFacebook, Again - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/us/politics/facebook-data-sharing-deals.html<p>... And someone has to start something new. What are your candidates to maybe replace Facebook ? Little/unknown yet social networks. <comment><USER2> You're not supposed to submit stories like this. In fact, that people do this is the reason that URLs in these kinds of stories aren't clickable. Links on the site are community property, and the submitter doesn't get to capture them with a special comment at the top of the thread.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wanted to give some context to the post since the news is already widely shared. But thank you for the guideline, I honestly didn't knew that.

<comment><USER3> It's in the FAQ: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In my opinion, the solution isn't to initially replace the messaging platform. Rather, user metadata management first and foremost must be addressed. There needs to be a way for people to have something like OpenLDAP+SAML that is federated. User metadata can then be used on whatever shiny app is cool at the time.

Messaging platforms come and go, but the people are what remain fairly constant. Applying this logic also means you can give people multiple options and use the same logins on multiple applications.

If I were to take a first stab at this, I would probably use something like the OpenLDAP fork ReOpenLDAP [1] and use my domains and my friends domains to set up master-master replication. Each domain owner is master for their domain. I have no idea what saml2 provider I would put in front of it. This system would store password hashes, ssh public keys, contact information, bio (used for signatures and "about me" boxes).

There should be a combination of web API's and a web UI to self service account info so that anyone can maintain, update or otherwise remove their data when they want.

[1] - [https://github.com/leo-yuriev/ReOpenLDAP](https://github.com/leo- yuriev/ReOpenLDAP)

</comment><comment> a-saleh I have several ideas:

* Secure Scuttlebut, with clients that are getting more and more user friendly, i.e. mobile [https://www.manyver.se/](https://www.manyver.se/)

* looking into individual community discourse servers, i.e. I would really like to be more active in purescript, or shutup and sitdown communities

* for personal communication, I moght be trying to get more of my ingroup on threema. It is reasonably secure messenger, and you need to _buy it_ to use it, and I would like to support that :)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd like to propose Movim :)

It's a federated social network fully built on the XMPP protocol.

Responsive, with desktop and mobile apps. It offers microblogging features like Mastodon, but also more advanced blogging (Markdown, edit, comments, likes), chatrooms, direct chat, video-conferencing, communities, tags... and all in real-time.

You can have a look on [https://movim.eu/](https://movim.eu/). If you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask them here!

</comment><comment><USER6> Email.

It lets you have private and group chats, organize events, share photos and links, keep contact lists, etc. I know is hard to see, but email is quite sexy: it is decentralized and vastly adopted, more so than FB. It works on every platform and it's been around for a long time. And it's not going anywhere. It's the dream of all the anarco-crpyto-hackers and it already exists! Sometimes it's hard to see the obvious.

And I think email could still be vastly improved by better clients. It just so happens that there is currently no big economic incentive to create one.

I believe that we are still in the very early moments of the Internet, and we are collectively doing a lot of stupid shit. Like the first few decades of synthesizer music. We have to go through some silly stages before getting back to our senses and developing some taste.

Also RSS, newsgroups and other blasts from the past. Everything has been reinvented poorly and plastered with ads, but just wait a few years...

</comment><comment><USER7> Previous discussion of NYT article: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18712382](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18712382)

</comment><comment><USER8> Google+ refugees are also looking for a new home. Lots of people are flocking to MeWe, but I don't think another proprietary monolith is the solution. Distributed, decentralised, federated social networks are the solution.

Diaspora and Mastodon are among the more popular options. I'm looking at Friendica and Hubzilla, because from there you can connect to people on both Diaspora and Mastodon.

</comment><comment><USER9> A law mandating open access to APIs would do wonders to spur competition.

Remember Pidgin? Knitting together disparate IM platforms into one client was great. You can't do that with Facebook, their TOS doesn't allow for it.

Open access to 3rd party clients that can bridge platforms will break the network effect lock-in and allow for real competition to emerge.

<comment><USER5> I am currently contributing on libraries for libpurple (the central library used in Pidgin) and Spectrum to improve the transports between those 3rd party networks and the XMPP one. Also with the integration of those transports within the Movim project.

Recently I was able to bridge Discord and Slack and working on Instagram (to finally have a decent way to use Instagram DM on desktop).

See [https://github.com/EionRobb/purple- discord](https://github.com/EionRobb/purple-discord), [https://github.com/EionRobb/purple- instagram](https://github.com/EionRobb/purple-instagram) and [https://movim.eu/](https://movim.eu/) :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wrote a filesystem-and-own-email-account-only cronjob for myself to do it, it and its predecessors have been working fine for about a half-decade

[https://github.com/howonlee/diogenes8](https://github.com/howonlee/diogenes8)

</comment><comment><USER11> Did anyone hear about openbook.social ? They had a failed kickstarter campaing but got their goal in a second one. I think the beta starts in january. I'm keen to test it out. TIt's privacy focused and hopefully 100% open source.

<comment><USER5> Centralized if I remember correctly even if they are open source. The instances will not federate to each-others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> HN badly needs an article downvote

<comment><USER13> That is the purpose of the "flag" link on stories.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Mastodon

<comment><USER15> I've been using Mastodon. In its current form it's about good enough to replace Twitter (apart from the obvious network effects).</comment></comment>