Ask HN: Which side project do you plan to do in 2019? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I'm planning to release at least one app or website per month in 2019. Ideally someone pays me to build their app, but if not, my list of side ideas include:

1\. Uber for private tutoring/students. I live in a university town and there's plenty of college kids wanting to teach schoolkids.

2\. Random story/character generator based off tropes.

3\. Punch card for babysitting, especially for the late night tiers that babysitters are reluctant to charge extra on.

4\. Recipe app, focused on instant things like bread makers and pressure cookers.

5\. Github but for recipes (this is really just an excuse to make fork puns)

6\. A chat with anonymous strangers community, similar to Omegle, except you post something similar to a tweet, and people can chat with you based on it. So you could make a post complaining about your boss, or how happy you are to get a job, then someone can chat with you about it. My main worry is that this could degrade into 4chan and it would be an uphill battle to moderate it.

7\. Gamification productivity app. Probably just a checklist, ala Habitica, or it could be integrated with Pomodoro Technique.

If anyone wants to use these ideas, feel free to. Maybe we could even work on something together.

<comment><USER3> > I'm planning to release at least one app or website per month in 2019

If this exercise is strictly to learn and expand your skillset, great!

But if you're actually trying to build something of value, no need to put an artificial time limit of a month. #1 might be decent business. Spend the time required to properly validate if there's demand for the project and build it for real, don't half ass it.

<comment><USER2> I've done a startup before, built in 2 weeks. It crashed 4 times a day, customer service response was about 4 days early on. People are willing to wait when it's an important enough problem.

But it's very hard to tell which will succeed and which wouldn't. I've been building "properly" the last 3 years and nothing came out of it.

The artificial time limit is there to force myself to focus on what really matters, prevent scope creep. E.g. the big problem with #1 is that people wanted scheduling, but I'm not entirely sure it's necessary so early on. It might just work as a matchmaking site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am planning to build a spec module for javascript to write effective generative tests [https://github.com/vadelabs/backend/tree/master/packages/spe...](https://github.com/vadelabs/backend/tree/master/packages/specs)

</comment><comment><USER5> I am planning to venture more into ML/AI (call me jumping into the bandwagon if you want, im not) both theoretically (implementing things myself to understand what is under the hood) and practically. Will try to get at least 2-3 internships or projects in said subject.

Any tips on learning statistics particularly for doing data analysis and understanding ML models?

</comment><comment><USER6> I want to finish translating [https://javascript.info/](https://javascript.info/) to my native language, Turkish in this case.

</comment><comment><USER7> I plan on making an online piano that you can play and record music for. I have built the easiest part, the actual piano, just need to build the backend so it can record sound.

</comment><comment><USER8> I am still working on my tutorial set for teaching young kids how to program and do problem solving in Scratch 3

I have been stalled a little with a new baby, but I hope to restart soon.

</comment><comment><USER9> Gotta try adding a feature to an app I use. Partially there, learn some Android along the way. Already learned about dependency injection.

</comment><comment><USER10> expand and organize my notes([https://github.com/darshanime/notes](https://github.com/darshanime/notes))

<comment><USER5> really love your notes. Am planning to compile whatever i learned into notes, you have any recommendation on any tools very comfy to take notes in?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: A recent graduate, how do I get over regret of not doing internships? - <AUTHOR>

I have just graduated with a PhD in CS from a top world university. I never did any internships during my studies because I always thought the PhD should take priority. Now I'm beginning to realise that this was a mistake. My friends who did internships with the likes of Google/Microsoft are now walking into top notch, high-paying jobs, while I am being rejected at every turn. This is probably because I have little interview experience and also because I just don't look as good as someone with top name brands on their CV. I feel I'm being left behind in the dust.
I guess I'm just looking for some motivation here.
I don't really have a portfolio, but I have expertise. Unfortunately that expertise is not taken into account when trying to get a foot in the door of one of these tech companies. But having one of the big names on your CV acts as a springboard to a great career. <comment><USER2> Don't worry about it. As notahacker said most people didn't get those internships either. And really what you're saying is that those internships helped people get their first real gig. You have a gig, so you can make use of it too.

Three things you can do: 1 - Ask your advisor or other profs from your department for referrals. These should be better even than a big company internship 2 - Keep pugging your CV out, and when get the rejection, ask why. Most people won't tell you (either can't be bothered or, in the US, fear of legal reprisal) but some will and you can use that to improve process 3 - Build a portfolio (yes, same as a new grad or even an undergrad). For many people a PhD is a _negative_ because many PhDs have excellent theoretical knowledge but no actual implementation skills (what's needed for a thesis can be harder but also a lot simpler / easier than what's needed to write something used by actual users). So turn that around: "I did my dissertation on compilers/OS/network routing/XXX and look, here's a project that some people are using and that is real and solid"

</comment><comment><USER3> First I would say that having a big name surely help to start land a first job, however once you're in, you can definitely have a great career nonetheless.

I did not have a PhD and I don't know the US equivalent for what I have - Master - (I'm french), however even though I did some internship, I chose them poorly and it did not allow me to get relevant experience. Note to students: Don't choose your firsts internships poorly, you'll regret it.

So I started doing personal project and phone call started to ring after I put Nodejs and Angular in my resume even though I just did some useless shit with it, and wasn't ready at all for productive work. Luckily enough, a recruiter working for a startup pass me along a test that wasn't for me, and I did it better than the original dude so I got my first job.

TLDR: Use your expertise to make some work that you can show / advertise. It doesn't have to be professional work, I would assume most people will not go in depth before calling you if it's relevant to them.

</comment><comment><USER4> I had this problem after undergrad in 2008. I did no internships during my college years, taking summer courses instead to 'catch up and graduate early'. Big mistake? Maybe. But I'm having a good career nonetheless. You are likely to have a much different experience than your friends (who are probably also your CS peers). Your comparisons of yourself to them will only take you so far in evaluating what you should be doing. And not very far.

You do have a portfolio! You have eight years of schooling with possibly interesting projects. You may have even worked on a project in that course of time in collaboration with a real company. Congrats, you may have some real world experience!

From this point, landing your first job is the most important thing. Local companies would love your expertise and can train you to work on their systems. Tell us your local area and maybe someone can help.

Want to chat more? I work in the cryptocurrency space. firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER5> Don't forget, if you had set your sights on getting an internship with Google/Microsoft there was a significant chance you'd have failed to get the internship there too if they preferred others' cover letters or had met their quota by the time they saw your application. Just as with paid work, they're not short of applicants.

Good news is, they need the full time employees more, they won't care at all about internships when you've got valuable real-life experience, and you get a lot of opportunities to reapply to companies that size in future.

</comment><comment> temp-reply If you're a top flight PhD it's more likely that people are saying "meh" than "Lord, no" to your application. Lack of relevant experience can often be completely compensated for by (1) enthusiasm and (2) good fit, especially at the the smaller, more intimate companies. If you're seriously facing constant rejection it's more likely that you have one or several of a host of generic problems that plague applicants and bring on the "meh", such as:

\- Cover letter too generic. Fails to identify (1) the company, (2) what it does, (3) why you specifically are a great fit for the specific position you are applying to

\- Forgot to sculpt your CV to fit the narrative of your cover letter. The CV isn't some static life scoresheet, it's a short story that changes between applications.

\- Responds to questions designed to test the outer limits of your knowledge by getting anxious, inventive, and defensive, instead of taking it as an opportunity to (1) acknowledge your lack of expertise, (2) describe a creative application of related relevant experience, and (3) state your eagerness to learn the specific topic they were asking about.

\- Apologized for yourself in the interview in any way. Why don't you have more internship experience? GOOD: "Well, I was interested in really focusing on my thesis at the time, but now I want to work in the private sector, and this role in particular really intrigues me. It's actually relevant to what I was doing before in that..." BAD: "Er, well, I don't know, haha, probably should have? Sorry..." Apologies are off-topic. They interrupt your narrative. Don't apologize.

\- No proofreading + chance encounter with grammar nut. (But your comment was really elegantly written, so I doubt that's your problem.) Sloppy dresser + chance encounter with sartorial nut. Etc. Don't give some meanie a reason to reject you. Don't break the spell of your story.

\- Didn't have any good questions at the end of the interview. Questions traditionally go at the end and in some ways it's unfair to do this to people, because by then they're usually enervated and ready to bolt... but this is the GRAND FINALE, the point where you REALLY need to drive the narrative home.

Lots of people are going to tell you to practice technical interviewing and that's important, but be sure not to neglect the NARRATIVE element of the application. Identify the company, identify you, explain why it's a perfect match. Repeat the same narrative in the CV, the resume, the interview, and the thank you note. That's how you defeat "meh".

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. Just to confirm, I have a good job (in my research field), but it's paying half as much as I'd get from the top tech companies, and that's what's killing me. I guess I wish I had started on a much higher salary, because it can only go up from there. It's the top tier companies that are rejecting me.

<comment><USER6> It's up to you to put in the effort to make yourself a compelling hire.

I have a MS from a top math program, and I languished for 2.5 years unemployed. I was fortunate enough to land a first job in frontend web development & invested countless hours learning & experimenting on and off the job. I do quite well now financially, and am satisfied with where I am at.

Since you're employed, your career is up to you. Some people luck into high powered salary tracks off the bat - for the rest of us, hard & smart work is necessary to compensate.</comment></comment></comment>


Interactive Vim Tutorial - <AUTHOR> https://www.openvim.com/ <comment><USER2> A bit off topic, but I find it amusing that the two top posts on the HN front page right now are "Open Vim" and "How to Exit Vim".

<comment><USER3> And this tutorial follows the convention of not mentioning how to quit vim in one of its early lessons.

<comment><USER4> Drug dealers never tell their clients how to wean off their vices. Is that a crime? :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The approach this interactive tutorial uses is how I my instructor taught me vi but I don't think it's the best way because just telling you which keys do what feels _random_. I learn much more effectively if I understand some of the "why". My previous comments about learning vi/vim being easier if one gets a little philosophical background:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21343686](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21343686)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20605840](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20605840)

</comment><comment><USER6> I find vimtutor to be the best source for beginners, at least it was for me.

</comment><comment><USER7> I started learning vim from [https://vim-adventures.com/](https://vim- adventures.com/) and it has been invaluable.

<comment><USER8> I can recommend "Practical Vim" which is a great book.

Regarding vim-adventures, I just gave it a try for the first time and while it does seem quite fun it puts a massive amount of emphasis on h and l to move left and right (that's all you start with, and even though you unlock w, e and b soon enough you can't use them outside of text tiles).

I hardly ever use h and l. There's almost always a better and faster way to move around, be it w, e, b (and their uppercase variants) or f/t/F/T. I think the only time I ever use h and l is when I need to move inside a word (fairly rare), or when I want to do something like "remove the next 4 letters and insert something instead" in which case I'd do something like c4l. Also commands that operate on words or look for specific anchor characters compose much better for . or macros.

<comment><USER9> > _I can recommend "Practical Vim" which is a great book._

I've read it only recently, after I was already familiar with Vim, and I cannot recommend it enough!

I had lots of "oh, I had no idea this was possible" moments and it took my Vim knowledge to the next level where I'm now (even) more productive than before.

Having said that, I'm not sure it is a good introductory resource for somebody making their first steps in Vim.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A great concept but frustratingly quick-paced. With each lesson I feel like I need at extra 5-10 minutes of practice before I move on but it forces me to after only a few seconds.

<comment><USER11> I agree. I'd vastly prefer having a chance to continue experimenting with each new command until I choose to advance to the next step.

By just being a text document, _vimtutor_ avoids this problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It took me a while, but I finally learned Vim by forcing myself to use it at work.

A year and a half later, it has taken over my life.

</comment><comment><USER13> I made the decision to start learning Vim yesterday when I found Mastering Vim and a full Vim course on packtpub.com for $5 each. I've been using Emacs for years, but it's always helpful to learn a new way to approach problems. Given how much I do in text editors, the investment is worth it.

Of course the bigger investment by far is the time. It's nonetheless nice to have access to cheap yet comprehensive learning materials so that it takes less time to learn.

</comment><comment><USER14> A thread from 2017: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15400037](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15400037)

2013: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5235817](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5235817)

2011: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3190380](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3190380)

</comment><comment><USER15> Related:

A vi editor quick-start tutorial:

[https://gumroad.com/l/vi_quick](https://gumroad.com/l/vi_quick) .

I am the author (user vram22 on HN), posting from another phone, with a throwaway user name.

I first wrote this tutorial for two Windows sysadmin friends who had to handle some Unix servers. They told me it helped them to learn vi basics and so use Unix more easily.

</comment><comment><USER16> These interactive tutorials are the only relatively painless way to learn the basics of vim.

</comment><comment><USER17> I thought I was just kidding when I noticed Vim related articles coming up over and over, and here's another one.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is a nice way to learn Vim.</comment>


Ask HN: How are you using Twitter? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Quite broad.... for work - posting updates of new videos, conference news, blogs etc, interacting with customers

At home - trying to be hilarious with very occasional one off quips with life observations</comment>


'Tractor beam' is possible with lasers, say scientists - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12620560 A laser can act as a "tractor beam", drawing small objects back toward the laser's source, scientists have said.It is known that light can provide a "push", for example in solar sails that propel spacecraft on a "wind of light". <comment><USER2> Same story from a few days ago, with some comments that discuss some of the technical details:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2271287></comment>


Apple to replace Aperture and iPhoto with 'Photos' next year - <AUTHOR> http://9to5mac.com/2014/06/27/apple-to-replace-aperture-and-iphoto-with-photos-for-os-x-early-next-year/

<comment><USER2> Sounds like they are about to repeat the Final Cut + iMovie to Final Cut X disaster.</comment>


Show HN: Meetter – Reduce time wasted by meetings - <AUTHOR> Hey, HN!
This post is not about useless meeting tips, nor about some new tool that drains remaining calendar hours.
Like most of us, I'm very frustrated by the amount of time wasted by meetings. Why most of us here hate meetings is well described in PG's essay: http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
There is also a great solution that worked for YC: office hours. Ok, but how can this help a regular maker in a regular company?
Most makers struggle with the meetings scheduled by their colleagues, so let's focus just on the company internal meetings.
What if every maker will have her/his own office hours few times a week at different times? Yeah, that probably won't work. Makers & managers often need to meet in 2+ groups...
OK, what if all makers within the company will have office hours at the same time? Would be nice, but that won't scale as it will require too many conference rooms and switching rooms fast enough may not be possible if someone has six 10min meetings with different folks…
Oh, wait, but what about video meetings? There is no room limit there and switching rooms takes seconds. Many of us work in distributed companies with a lot of meetings online already. Great, but there is still a problem with agreeing on times and booking small meetings within those hours. Also, what to do if there is urgent discussion and everything is overbooked ahead of time with non-urgent managerial stuff?
OK, so that is what we are trying to solve with https://www.Meetter.ai and would love to hear what you think about the early version. Please check How Meetter Works section on the landing page for more details.
Here is an open demo account just for HN: https://hn.meetter.ai/signup-demo After sign-up, just try to post few agenda topics with random people and see if you can join office hours scheduled Tue/Wed/Thu at 8 AM PT. <comment> jarl-ragnar I have a much simpler way of dealing with meetings. If I'm sent a meeting request and there's no agenda or clear reason for my attendance I decline it.

A couple of months doing that in a new job, explaining the rational where necessary, usually sorts the problem out.

<comment><USER2> This is the crux of the problem. Is there an agenda that leads to a concrete result and is it the right set of participants? Too often, people turn a 10 minute meeting into an hour by just socializing or talking about things that only 2 people in the 10 care about or need to know. This is what annoys me about Slack's "we remove all meetings and email" approach. You can have no full meetings using Slack, instead you invite everyone to a channel and have 100 micro-meetings of a minute all day long that constantly interrupt your flow and could be solved easily with one short 15 minute meeting.

The problem is lack of good communication skills. Whether it is inability to write concise emails that have clear actionable tasks or resolution or having agenda for meetings and someone who will force the meeting forward. The other thing that drives this is managers (project, product, technical) who feel they must know _everything_ about _everything_ related to the project. Lack of clear roles and job descriptions exacerbates this issue and you end up with a lot of people only interested in job preservation.

<comment><AUTHOR> > This is what annoys me about Slack's "we remove all meetings and email" > approach. You can have no full meetings using Slack, instead you invite > everyone to a channel and have 100 micro-meetings of a minute all day long > that constantly interrupt your flow and could be solved easily with one > short 15 minute meeting.

Unlike the slack approach, with Meetter micro meetings are clustered inside predefined hours during the day to avoid distraction. You can set it as the last hour at the end of the work day and get 7 hours of no distraction. Also, if there are multiple topics with the same group of people - these will be merged into one within that hour, say if for some reason you have six five minutes long topics with other two people - you will get one productive thirty minutes to talk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'll be honest, many of the issues I've seen with meetings are issues with not training people how to have productive meetings, not having it clear who can make decisions, and perverse incentives.

Not to mention almost every woman I know in tech has told me a story where they are ignored, only to have someone else who's a guy propose basically the same idea (including having had male coworkers who are friends knowingly propose the exact same idea as an experiment) and have it accepted and praised.

If you think of how much time you spend in meetings, some sort of meeting instruction/meeting consultant might just pay for itself in increased productivity.

I am not a meeting consultant or a manager, but using robert's rules of order in a hobby community made me much better at meetings.

Simple ideas like having the problem clearly stated, asking for proposed solutions, debating them by going back and forth from opposed to in support so that it's clear when the minority has all been heard from without having everyone have to put in 2 cents, only including actual stakeholders etc.

Anyway that's not to distract from this effort, this seems like a great solution to any scheduling problems if nobody is in an open office.

Of course video calls work best when everyone has private office space without an open plan.

<comment><USER4> > I'll be honest, many of the issues I've seen with meetings are issues with > not training people how to have productive meetings, not having it clear who > can make decisions, and perverse incentives.

I agree with this, a lot of this is human error and inefficiency and tendency to fill spaces

> Not to mention almost every woman I know in tech has told me a story where > they are ignored, only to have someone else who's a guy propose basically > the same idea (including having had male coworkers who are friends knowingly > propose the exact same idea as an experiment) and have it accepted and > praised.

Not to take away from the good point of gender discrimination, but this happens a lot of guys too. It's a cut-throat world...

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure why you raised your point, but unfortunately generalizing when a specific issue is raised is one of the problem things I see in meetings too.

Like if someone says, "The front end is extremely slow loading the SPA in the browser because of legacy cruft," I see a lot of people relate that to their area or generalize, either "Analytics also takes forever, the email queue needs more workers/the db has slow queries, building the app takes too long, the mobile app take forever to sign in" etc etc, or "the whole tech stack is slow and needs improvement."

No doubt all true, and sure perhaps speeding up DB queries by indexing on user email or whatever would speed up loading for signed in people, but the front end is still slow to load, and bringing up other issues doesn't solve the specific problem raised, if you get my point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Note: Meetter has built-in video meeting experience with recording & transcribe by default. You will see 'Join Now' button on the agenda about 5 minutes before the Meetter hour starts.

If you would like to try it with your team in your own Meetter account with own hours schedule, just email the name of the organization to <my first name>@meetter.ai or simply sign-up from the landing page. I promise to respond with new account URL quickly.

Appreciate any feedback! Gene Podolyak

<comment><USER5> This is a really unique solution; nice work. Do you have any thoughts on how this would work across timezones (our team is spread across 9 hours)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! If you have at least one hour of overlap - then you can just use that daily hour for Meetter. That is what we do within our team.

If that is a bit more complicated like: US, Europe & Australia. You may need to setup hours on 3 different intersections and people can decline those that don't work for them and Meetter will use that information for scheduling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Company meetings are not about the tech or tools you can throw at them. It is about the culture. Some companies understand that and minimize their meetings and solely depend on project management systems.

Unless you can find a tool to make these people understand the culture has a problem (also the hierarchy), I don't think any new tool can help.

Note: Basecamp, zoho and all others promise similar tools. You might want to change the intro video, maybe invest in voice-over with basic demo.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your suggestion on landing page!

The problem we see is that companies in their transition from physical office to a virtual and distributed workplace carried over all the meeting habits that are outdated.

We believe there is no longer need in standing meetings with fixed audiences.

With Meetter, you are basically setting your weekly meetings budget for the whole company and let topics compete for that time. This is a lot different from what is happening today: meetings fight for all the available time on everyone's calendar.

Meetter hours are not finalized until 15 minutes before the start. High priority, smaller and shorter topics win. Meetter makes all meetings about what they should be: about solving problems, not about socializing & sharing updates - there are less expensive ways to do that.

Can tool change the culture? We are optimists and believe they can.

<comment><USER6> Have you experienced these yourself or seen it from outside (like a tech consultant)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I have personally struggled a lot. About 5+ years of experience working in a highly distributed company where meetings for me and many colleagues take more than 50% of the time. There a lot of advice out there on how to improve things, but it takes time to master. The other problem is that it is not something that only you need to learn, all your peers have to and that takes time. There are also limits to what you can do with existing technology.

Compare the difficulty of doing project task tracking in MS Word versus JIRA/Trello/Basecamp.

With meetings, we are still at MS Word stage and Meetter is a JIRA/Trello for meetings.

<comment><USER6> Well then, you should include a case study like yours because it would be far more effective than a short video.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Feature request for way, way down the line: auto-integrating product work into daily/weekly standup meeting invites.

If I have committed something, updated a ticket, run a deployment, resolved a pagerduty issue, moved a work task from Planning to Doing, etc, then automate retrieving this work log and pre-populate it in the meeting invite. All members of the meeting can see the work and can ask about it if they need to. The individual then doesn't need to state what work they did, but only mention their blockers.

I believe this would benefit virtually any group with a stand-up meeting. It's a lot of integration work, though. Might already exist, I'm not sure.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for bringing this up! One thing that we are not yet sure how much value the concept of daily/weekly standing meetings will add to the teams using Meetter for most of their meetings.

I feel like many meeting habits and practices are evolved from the physical office environment that has limitations that are not present in the virtual world.

Btw, check out this talk from Al Pittampali at Google [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn-q529ExFw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn-q529ExFw) One of the keystone habits he is advocating is "Make all standing meetings tentative"

<comment><USER7> Oh I agree, but we do need to discuss blockers relatively quickly after they come up, and stand-ups can be an efficient way to do this. You can try to just automate workflows or try to get people to resolve blockers asynchronously, but if it takes more than a couple replies to resolve them, now a meeting may have been faster/more efficient.

If I'm using Meetter to automatically schedule a stand-up, I (presumably) can say, only schedule the meeting if we have blockers to discuss, and only invite the people who are mentioned in the issue/blocker. But how to determine if there's blockers, and who to invite? Query the issue tracker.

You could look up blocked GitHub or ZenHub Issues and generate a stand-up to discuss them once they happen, and maybe re-generate a stand-up after X time if they have not been updated, to prevent stale blockers.

What I get out of this is when I work for a company which requires stand-ups, I don't have to go to them if I have no blockers. I know I would pay for that privilege :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, I see what you are suggesting. This indeed makes sense and may be possible not so far down the road when we expose APIs.

For now, it is possible to implement the same workflow with the current version of Meetter just by asking someone to check task tracker for blockers about 30 minutes before the Meetter hour and manually create topics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting. I have a bunch of private notes on the subject from when I was last playing with startup ideas. The biggest hurdle I kept hitting was differentiating the startup within the calendar space, because it is a pretty well saturated space with a lot of entrenched players. (Similarly as bad as the Mail space, if not worse, just as we've seen several apps exit these past couple of weeks. Though some of those efforts have exited well for the startup founders, so that's an issue more for the overly conservative "local" VCs I was curious if I could get to invest, when I was putting my notes together…)

The partial pivot to automating web meetings is a neat idea, but the immediate concern I would see there is that now you're fighting _two_ fairly heavily entrenched spaces, calendars and web meetings. Twice the battle fronts might mean twice the opportunities to exit, but it also might mean twice the opportunities to be out-competed/exhausted?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is so true. Looking at recent developments in calendar software - it is almost all about generating more meetings easier, and not much about protecting from the distraction. Meeting software companies - pricing models tiered based on duration and size of the meetings. So it will require 180 degree u-turn for them to catch up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Neat! I've wanted something like this to use at Sourcegraph. We would like to be able to say "Alice and Bob, you two should chat about XYZ for 15 min sometime in the next week" and have some piece of software aggregate and schedule all those things. How much of that can Meetter do?

<comment><AUTHOR> Great suggestion! We never thought about such a use case so as of now by default you will be also added to that meeting, but we can easily tweak it.

So Meetter can do alomost everything you described. I will let you know when we have tweaked it.

<comment><USER9> Looking forward to it!

<comment><AUTHOR> Give it a try: [https://i.gyazo.com/d848d0bcdedcb4046b644613efbc95ed.gif](https://i.gyazo.com/d848d0bcdedcb4046b644613efbc95ed.gif)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi All,

I'd like to thank everyone for the feedback and for trying meetter this week.

We will be closing demo account this week. You are still more than welcome to sign-up for early access here: [https://www.Meetter.ai](https://www.Meetter.ai)

Good luck!

Gene

</comment><comment><USER10> Is the name an abbreviation of Meet-eater?

<comment><AUTHOR> Love it! :-)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Voia – get expert travel advice. PWYW - <AUTHOR> http://voia.travel

<comment><AUTHOR> I co-founded Voia because unforgettable travel experiences often starts with a perfect tip.

Today we are launching our beta with focus in the Latin America region. So if you are planning to head down south, or ever dream of trekking to Machu Picchu, enjoying a caipirinha en Copacabana Beach, dancing Tango in Buenos Aires or skiing the Andes... well we are here to help.

You are welcome to try it out; and –needless to say– your feedback is much appreciated.

We went live with our beta today at: [http://voia.travel](http://voia.travel)

It's hard and time consuming to find valuable information from destinations. Sometimes there is simply too much out there, and it's hard to discern what tip or advice is right for you.

Then there are destination where information is scarce and source are less reliable (most sources are actively trying to sell you something). So... we resort to friends, and friends of friends that really know the destination (if we are lucky to have them); or end researching forums and travel guides endlessly.

Now you can get in the know tailor-made advice directly from experts for free. Personally and privately. With a PWYW reward system for experts that will help you get the most out of your next trip.

Hope you like it. [http://voia.travel](http://voia.travel)

</comment><comment><USER2> Hi this is a great idea. The ui is sleek and fast. While there are a lot of travel websites, I think this is a niche that can be addressed.

Some nitpicks. The seek advice button appears only on mouseover and that too at the lower end of the box. Though that will work fine s in most cases, the one I looked at had so many tags, the button went below the fold (First Voiager on Peru). Won't it be better if it is just below the image?

I was on the Peru page. I tried to get advice and was prompted for sign up. Once I did, it took me to the home page. I would prefer to remain on Peru page as I have to navigate there again.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Sharmi. It's late here but I am already working on this recommendations; they really make sense. I'll keep you posted.</comment></comment>


Drip – Fast JVM launching without the hassle of persistent JVMs - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ninjudd/drip <comment><USER2> Last commit from 2017</comment>


Show HN: Create interactive backgrounds with Brusher - <AUTHOR> https://kamranahmed.info/brusher/ <comment><USER2> I can't remember right now, but I saw a similar background on some website where they had put the blurry demo of the website in the background and moving the mouse over it kept it un-blurring. Looks nice!</comment>


Programming languages evolution tree [picture] - <AUTHOR> http://fedho.com/image/view/13178

<comment><USER2> It seems to stop around 2004. Python 2.4 and up are missing. So are the newer Java releases. And no Arc of course. Shame.</comment>


TC50: 1 - Demo: 1 - Startup: 0 - <AUTHOR> http://www.centernetworks.com/tc50-demo-startups <comment><USER2> Perhaps it's just me but I can't figure out what that title is supposed to mean?

<comment><USER3> Two winners in a 3 way fight, TC & DEMO, one loser, Startups.

<comment><USER2> Ah, right, gotcha. I was seeing "TC50:" as a sort of tag then trying to interpret the rest mathematically. Obviously, I shouldn't trying reading HN too early in the morning</comment></comment></comment>


Git.apache.org has been down for days - <AUTHOR> https://status.apache.org/ <comment><USER2> I found this today from CI build failure of a golang project depend on git.apache.org/thrift.git...</comment>


Ask HN: How can I improve my writing skills? - <AUTHOR> I want to get better at writing clear and short sentences without making grammatical mistakes. I'm a developer and I think this particular skill can help me communicate better with my team / users by writing better documentations or describing any problem.<p>I keep iterating on the things I write and never seem to be satisfied, and see there is always a room of improvements. I don't feel the same way when I read others articles / blogs. <comment><USER2> Joseph M. Williams's "Style: Toward Clarity and Grace" is by far the best book on learning HOW to put sentences and paragraphs together. It teaches principles that I've never seen anywhere else -- principles for making my writing easy to read and understand. Then it teaches methods for applying those principles. So instead of teaching rules, it teaches how writing can be clear. Instead of "don't use passives" it shows the only time a passive verb makes the writing easier to read. It teaches how much new information to put in a sentence and where to put it. And then it shows how to connect that sentence to the next for simple flow.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. Ask yourself: What do I want to say? 2\. Say it. 3\. Say it shorter.

People think if they state their ideas plainly, others will think these are obvious, simple ideas. So they try to cover it up, using big words and long sentences.

Substance comes before style, so first you make your point. Then you chop it down.

(Personally, once I'm done writing, I set out to cut it by 20%)

Kevin Kelly wrote this same advice differently, he said you can't write and edit at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER4> Google has some pretty good introductory writing resources for developers: [https://developers.google.com/tech- writing/one](https://developers.google.com/tech-writing/one)

</comment><comment><USER5> Here is the 3 step method to improving your writing:

      1. Get a book called Elements of Style by Strunk and White.
      2. Internalize the rules in that book and apply them whenever you write.
      3. Write as much as you can, and read even more.

Source: I studied English in college

<comment><USER6> The Third Edition of Elements of Style (1979) is the most faithful to Strunk's great rhythm and style:

>Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

By the fourth edition (1999) mother modernity knows best. A crock of editors resort to neutering his rules to skirt around them easier, sacrificing all rhythm and possessive clarity:

>This requires not that the writer make all sentences short or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The Plain English Campaign offer some free guides on their website: [http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/free- guides.html](http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/free-guides.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> Grammarly has helped me out a lot. Even though it fixes your mistakes, you can see what you did wrong and learn from it. I also read a lot. active reading can help you so much!

</comment><comment><USER9> If you find something that works please post your results here. I'd also like to improve my writing. Clear communication is so important in this industry but I just can't master it.

</comment><comment><USER10> To write week, you first have to read a lot of well written works. This comes from fiction, rather that non fiction.</comment>


Russian Space Propaganda Posters - <AUTHOR> http://spaceindustrynews.com/19-awesome-communist-space-propaganda-posters/

<comment><USER2> <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

_If the original title begins with a number or number + gratuitous adjective, we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids."_

You got it right the first time -- figured you'd try again with more linkbait words?

</comment><comment><USER3> You posted this 17 hours ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4215828></comment>


Show HN: Monocle Reader – feedback please? - <AUTHOR> https://monoclereader.com <comment><USER2> My first observation is that you only get a blank page in Firefox Focus with trackers blocked. Is it necessary to track me to look at your home page? To me, that's a turn-off.

<comment><AUTHOR> Weird it just shows you a blank page. I've just setup the basic Google Analytics... And with UBlock Origin in Firefox I can still see the site

<comment><USER2> I'm referring to Firefox Focus, the mobile app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Disables my back button

<comment><USER4> Mine too. Safari on iOS. I couldn't click back to HN</comment></comment>


A centipede robot - <AUTHOR> https://www.declanoller.com/2019/05/16/in-case-hexapods-werent-creepy-enough-the-centipede-robot <comment><USER2> This was fun to follow along. Just got myself a 3-d printer and reading things like this is inspiring.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! I only recently got one too, but it's been really useful for projects. Which did you get?

<comment><USER2> Prusa i3 MK2 from a friend. Works OK -- can't compare it to anything else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe it's a dodecapod?

Since I was just doing this stuff yesterday with a Raspberry Pi with a stepper motor HAT, that being driven through I2C, and his choice here being PWM modules, does anybody have a reference comparing the latency of different motor-driving approaches?

<comment><USER3> Haha I guess it's a as-many-legs-as-you-want-to-print-apod!

The PWM modules are also driven through I2C. Do you mean the latency between the sending the command and the motor doing it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Oh neat! I made the centipede. I didn't realize someone posted this until I saw some traffic from HN. It's a work in progress, I have some fun plans for it.

Let me know if you have any questions or feedback!</comment>


Scientists discover a blue light-emitting diode from a semiconductor material - <AUTHOR> https://www.eletimes.com/scientists-discover-a-blue-light-emitting-diode-from-a-semiconductor-material <comment><USER2> Excerpt:

"As Yang and his colleagues discovered, this is due to the unique nature of perovskites' crystal structure. Halide perovskites are composed of a metal, such as lead or tin, equal numbers of larger atoms, such as cesium, and three times the number of halide atoms, such as chlorine, bromine or iodine.

When these elements are mixed together in solution and then dried, the atoms assemble into a crystal, just as salt crystalizes from sea water."</comment>


All About SQL Aggregate Functions - <AUTHOR> http://www.helenanderson.co.nz/sql-aggregate-functions/ <comment><USER2> I would have posted this to [https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/](https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/) instead, but I'm still upvoting because the next part about the window functions is what I really wanted to see.

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome job, Helen. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks jp0d :D</comment></comment>


Andrew Yang Policy on Regulating Technology Companies - <AUTHOR> https://www.yang2020.com/blog/regulating-technology-firms-in-the-21st-century/ <comment><USER2> Does Yang still have a chance with the democratic party? His numbers looked terrible last time I checked. Is he planning on going independent if he fails to secure the nomination?

<comment><AUTHOR> Dunno if he ever really had a chance. That said, he's got as good a chance as he ever did. Currently polling 2-4%. That said, he just raised $1 million in the last week, and $1.5 million the last week of Q3. He also just started rolling out TV ads in Iowa and New Hampshire for the first time.

If he stands a chance, we'll probably know in the next couple of weeks.</comment></comment>


DigitalOcean App Platform - <AUTHOR> http://www.digitalocean.com/docs/app-platform/ <comment><USER2> Somewhat relevant: apparently DigitalOcean's managed Kubernetes had serious security flaws in its early days after release. [0] Can anyone comment on this and whether it should colour our impressions here?

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22490390](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22490390)

<comment><USER3> Depending on how they handled that, maybe those incidents should speak for DO, not against them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pricing from the article:

CPU Type|CPUs|RAM|Price/mo

Shared|1|1 GB|$12

1\. Buy a $5/mo droplet

2\. sudo apt-get install docker

3\. run your Dockerfile

is that worth a $7/mo (140%) premium?

I would use it if it was the same cost as the underlying droplet.

<comment><USER5> The real benefit seems to be its in-built CI/CD, and horizontal scaling, much like GCP Cloud Run:

"App Platform allows you to hook up your source code repo and deploy using a cloud-hosted build system that automatically detects the needed environment to run your app."

<comment><USER6> Caprover is what you're looking for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So this is this solution they're offering after purchasing Nanobox? I wish it had more feature parity because this is a bit of let down after a year of waiting for what they with do with the Nanobox tech.

</comment><comment><USER8> If they add Django support and do it well, this could siphon a lot of early development work away from Heroku.

</comment><comment><USER9> Exciting! I've been looking for this sort of service from DO for a while.

</comment><comment><USER10> how is this compared to google's app engine?

<comment><USER11> This seems like more similar to AppEngine Flexible than AppEngine Standard.

From what I gather, it looks like they deploy your code onto managed VMs instead of running your code on fully managed multi-tenant servers.

Disc: I work for Google opinions are my own

<comment><USER12> This is more similar to Cloud Run combined with Cloud Build, when using the Dockerfile.

<comment><USER11> Oh interesting, didn't see the docker part, thought it was just language runtimes.

The data plane and pricing model is quite different from Cloud Run though. Cloud Run is multi-tenant like AppEngine Standard, will scale to zero, and instead of fixed monthly pricing, you pay for the amount of compute you use per-second

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> bitz-please I wonder how to get a beta invite?</comment>


What happened to the dinosaurs? - <AUTHOR> http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2015/05/26/what-happened-to-the-dinosaurs/?hn <comment><USER2> > "Is abortion right", returns from a strongly pro-choice viewpoint

[https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome- instant&ion=1&e...](https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome- instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=is+abortion+right)

> "Is abortion okay", returns an excerpt from a strongly pro-life viewpoint

[https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome- instant&ion=1&e...](https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome- instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=is+abortion+okay)

> "Does God exist", returns an atheist's viewpoint

[https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome- instant&ion=1&e...](https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome- instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=does+god+exist)

> "Is God real", returns a strongly theistic viewpoint

[https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome- instant&ion=1&e...](https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome- instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=is+god+real)

I feel like Google isn't doing a good service by providing quick and very biased answers to very big questions.

<comment><USER3> I take issue with your analogy, as these are all moral questions. In contrast, "What happened to the dinosaurs" is a factual question.

<comment><USER4> "Does God exist" seems pretty factual to me.

<comment><USER5> That seems overly simplistic, given the diverse claims as to the nature of God/Gods.

To pick one, the Judaeo-Christian god seems to be unwilling to allow proof of its existence. This seems to be intentional, to place the acceptance/rejection of its existence onto a plane of personal faith, rather than provable fact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Xin Luna Dong at Google works on the problem of web site factual credibility. See her talk at Stanford.[1] There's a database of well-known facts, and when web sites mention those subjects, their credibility is rated by detecting disagreements with those facts. This in turn affects their search ranking. This helps detect satire sites, fantasy baseball vs real baseball, Obama "birthers", and such. She said the system is live for some topics, but not fully rolled out yet.

[1] [http://web.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/150429.html](http://web.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/150429.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> I long for an age where pre-medieval superstition are expunged from popular culture. It's truly embarassing to see a large percentage of humanity still in the grip of ideas promoted by decrepit old men wearing funny hats.

Men who have contributed absolulely nothing to the advancement of society, culture, science, medicine, engineering or any of the real things that improve the human condition.

These people truly need to be laughed at and ridiculed. From the Pope all the way down the hierarchy and similarly for all religions.

Think about what these people do and contribute every day versus what teachers, scientists, doctors, engineers, construction workers and business people contribute. There is zero comparison.

It's 2015. Ridicule them. Don't apease or respect them. And please, oh, please, do not give them the respect of having equal standing to scientific theories on the internet. A search for anything creationist should only deliver solid explanations of how utterly ridiculous it is to even begin to consider any part of the entire contrived framework.

How much longer are we going to tolerate the men with funny hats piss all over centuries of accumulated and massively tested scientific knowledge? 100 years? 200? 500? Why?

<comment><USER8> The pope beleives in evolution and wants evolution to be taught. [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/pope- francis-...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/pope-francis- declares-evolution-and-big-bang-theory-are-right-and-god-isnt-a-magician-with- a-magic-wand-9822514.html)

Mocking people does nothing to change their opinion. I'm trying to change your opinion with this post. Would I be more sucessful if I called you names?

I totally sympathise - I hate the fact that so many people believe absolute nonsense. But then I know plenty of atheists who also believe absolute nonsense.

<comment><USER7> Whether the Pope chooses to capitulate or not does not matter. The massive enterprise known as the Vatican only serves to promote a set of superstitions and delusions that have infected human brains for centuries. That place needs to be shut down. They need to return all the money they've stolen from the poor and the place needs to be turned into a museum of primitive thinking.

With regards to ridiculing them. Tolerance is a delicate thing.

What if you had a million people still believing and promoting the "fact" that blood-letting and human sacrifice were necessary in order to cure disease and promote good crops? And what if they pointed to a set of words chiseled out on some stones as being the command from their god to engage in human sacrifice? And they demanded legal protection from our government? And, of course, tax exemption? And, of course, to be able to teach this to your kids and my kids in school? And every politician had to swear that they believed in this horse- shit because they need those million votes?

What do you do then? Do you embrace and tolerate them? Or to you fight them at every corner, even ridicule them, in order to eradicate their influence form society?

Should a politician who says her or she believes in this shit be allowed to hold office? Should a President swear on the chiseled tablets as a sign of entering into a covenant with the people? Should a whole nation proclaim to be under the protection of these gods who want human sacrifice?

No, of course not. And if you tolerate them. If we accept them. If we allow them to even for a microsecond sit at the same table with scientists we fail to evolve as humans.

You have to laugh at them in order to shift them into an uncomfortable position where they'll have to really question what they are saying. Why don't we, as adults, say we believe in the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus? Nobody has proven they don't exist? In fact, you can't prove they don't exist. Yet anyone would be laughed out of a room if they proclaimed these kinds of beliefs. And that would be the right reaction.

No, this is nonsense. It isn't the 1,500's any more. A creationist and their horse-shit have no place anywhere near scientific facts, schools and certainly nowhere related to an online search of the Theory of Evolution. To allow such a thing is a disservice to humanity.

This needs to stop. Let's stop pretending it is OK to believe in flying horsemen, talking snakes, singing bushes, parting seas, getting help from a god on a test while on the other side of town a little kid is dead from cancer, etc., etc., etc.

I am not a militant atheist but I am really getting tired of the bullshit. The constant barrage of nonsense being placed on a level plane with science isn't sitting well with me. None of this nonsense deserves any respect at all. None of it. They get rich of the poor and our governments give them special standing. That's irrational. Absolutely irrational.

Nearly everyone on this planet today owes their lives to science. Yet we don't ridicule morons in funny hats who believe in singing bushes and supernatural beings.

Here's the problem: Politicians like to talk about economic disparity. They do not talk about the real long term problem of intellectual disparity. Fast forward to 100 years from now. If things don't change we will have a situation where there will be a huge gap between those educated in the sciences and those left in the dark through supernatural beliefs and the lack of education.

I know ignorant religious people who home-school their kids and teach them such nonsense as the earth being 5,000 years old. They are so far behind already that they might as well be cave men with iPhones. It's sad, really. They live their lives justifying everything that happens through divine intervention and intent. They are absolutely and totally ignorant in the context of modern scientific knowledge and completely closed to learning or considering anything new. For all they know the earth might as well be flat. I can see a future where it won't be rich vs. poor but ignorant religious vs. scientifically literate. This disparity will cause cataclysmic clashes. I mean, just take a look at some of these tribes in the middle east. They ARE cave-men with iPhones.

No, you have to laugh and ridicule them. In 2015 these ideologies do not deserve any respect whatsoever. None.

Harsh? Probably.

I have done this to people BTW. In some cases they've cussed me out and in a some they have engaged me in conversation. No, I am not an ass about it. I simply smile and politely ask something like "You don't really believe that stuff, do you?". Have I convinced anyone? Don't know, but I did make them think. One of my favorite questions is: "Do you really believe in a singing bush?" and it goes from there.

<comment><USER8> You don't have to be an utter cunt about it, and being a cunt is unlikely to change anyone's beliefs. If anything it will make their belief stronger.

You are creating and strengthening that which you hate. Your behaviour is counter productive. It is entirely unhelpful to behave as you do.

You claim to be rational yet in that fucking huge wall of text you didn't bother to include any research on effective methods to change behaviours.

Your emotional response is _identical_ to that of a faith based response - your response is pure emotion and faith and is devoid of fact.

But those people are the ones we should be mocking?

<comment><USER7> I am perfectly comfortable being a cunt with people who refuse to use reason and choose to be so ignorant OVER TWO THOUSAND YEARS after some of this ignorant nonsense started.

It's like telling someone they are being a fucking cunt for ridiculing and rejecting someone who believes in human sacrifice to Aztec gods. It IS fucking primitive nonsense and it should no longer be tolerated in any form.

And, no, it isn't emotional, it's rational. There's nothing emotional about taking the position that people who believe such incredibly ridiculous nonsense are absolutely delusional. They are and that's absolutley objective with no emotion attached whatsoever.

Sorry, you are wrong.

Would you accept medieval beliefs being imposed by leaders in your town? Of course not. And you would be doing so objectively and not based on emotion.

Religoius superstition needs to be ridiculed and relegated to the history books. It needs to be no different than when we study primitive civilizations, their beliefs and customs. This should be taught and studied but nobody in a million years would propose it should be tolerated or respected in any way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd really rather prefer there was some online repository of facts, constantly updated via Machine Learning over publicly available information, which might give up to the second responses of the kind 'Our current understanding is ...'

Is there one already? Wolfram Alpha is close, I guess. Wikipedia is not quite what I'm thinking of. Google is working on something, not sure if it's public though. Their search engine.. also not quite what I'm thinking of.

What/where have I missed?

<comment><USER10> This is an example of precisely the kind of false-positive that you would expect to have emerge when you leave it up to machine learning over publicly available information to try to figure out the answer to a question.

<comment><USER9> I kind of agree TBH, although I would say their search engine (as it is today) and a 'fact-repo' are quite different things. I'd expect a higher level of rigour in the fact-repo ML checking processes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Reminds me of one of my favorite @profbriancox tweets:

"Wading thru much bollocks trying to research evolution of pigments. I suggest Google introduce a logical "and.not.god_did_it" switch"

[https://twitter.com/ProfBrianCox/status/115080841411051520](https://twitter.com/ProfBrianCox/status/115080841411051520)

<comment><USER12> "evolution of pigments -bible -god -creationism"

Knowing how to properly use Google is useful. The three most useful tools for Google searches are "-", "*", and "site:" in my opinion.

<comment><USER13> "inurl:pdf" is great for finding copies of papers, too. "filetype:" supposedly works as well, but I've had much less luck using it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There's a very interesting and subtle shift of the perception of what truth and facts are in the last ten-fifteen years. A friend once said to me, years ago, "Google is my memory".

I'm not even remotely qualified to untangle the issues, but fundamentally it seems the problem is that truth is being mediated by the electronic systems "I feel lucky" rather than critically analyzed. It's similar to the old newspaper mediation of truth, but far more widespread.

</comment><comment><USER15> Real time updates now make Google bombs even easier to accomplish. The result described in the article is #2 on the page, after a one day old article describing the problem. This article is in the "In The News" section.

</comment><comment><USER16> I no longer get that article, so I'm guessing the flagging worked.

<comment><USER17> It's #2 in the organic search results for me.

<comment><USER18> same. pbs has an actual explanation about 7 links down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Since we have a Presidential election coming up in the US, expect a lot of psychotic SEO activity.

<comment><USER20> That may explain it, I just noticed sanatorum has been subtly removed from our standard spell checkers.

I don't think it is healthy when santorum is red, and I hope we can get that part of the namespace back after the election.</comment></comment>


Genocide and Jedi: Why the Sith may be Right - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/03/genocide-and-jedi-why-the-sith-may-be-right-in-old-republic.ars <comment><USER2> There is a great sci-fi/fantasy series of novels I can recommend if you're interested in this topic: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Watch_%28Russian_novel%29>

In the second book (Day Watch), the story is continued from the point of view of the "bad guys" from the first book, and the reader slowly understands that it's not simple good/evil, all characters have their own complex emotions and motivations.

Warning however - skip the movie, it really really sucked.

<comment><USER3> Sure, It takes a person called zavulon to defend the bad guys ;)

The Watch series comes highly recommended though. Very fascinating series, interesting concepts, nice writing style. (also, the movies are o.k. as well. They get much better when you watch them a second time, as you see a whole lot more clues)

<comment><USER2> Ha! I didn't even realize the connection when I was posting this, that's awesome

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I thought this was a useful reminder that there are always 2 sides to every coin. It is useful to understand your opponent's motivation as people are rarely motivated by simply "being evil".

<comment><USER4> "Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind; it may offer a way to make him your friend." Lazarus Long

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _"If you seek to aid everyone that suffers in the galaxy, you will only weaken yourself ... and weaken them. It is the internal struggles, when fought and won on their own, that yield the strongest rewards. If you care for others, then dispense with pity and sacrifice and recognize the value in letting them fight their own battles."_

―Darth Traya

Sounds like a philosophy I can get behind. It's just unfortunate that behind all that, the Sith will force-choke someone to death for disagreeing with them. But there are many aspects of the Sith philosophy that are appealing, especially to startup founders: particularly that of passion, without which, we wouldn't have too many startups. And Sith are at least allowed to love, unlike Jedi (though, I guess love could be a subset of passion).

<comment><AUTHOR> You might like Ayn Rand's Objectivism. She wrote The Virtue of Selfishness, among other fiction (most notably, Atlas Shrugged). To your other point - perhaps even among Sith lords there are good ones and bad ones? No need to paint everyone in a faction the same shade.

<comment><USER6> It's funny that you mention Ayn Rand, because (to be perfectly blunt) she's kind of a watered down Nietzsche. And the Sith in Knights of the Old Republic (the sequel to which chops was quoting) were very Nietzschean.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not knowing much about the story I really enjoyed reading this article. I had assumed the Sith were just about power-hungry evil villains.

<comment><USER8> Actually, while watching Star Wars ... I always thought that there was a mismatch between the Dark Side and pure evil ... are emotions (love, hate, agony, fear) evil?

... well putting aside the Emperor/Darth Vader duo building an empire and a big-ass spherical ship that could destroy planets, which was also a familiar story since at that time I was learning about the Roman empire in school, which went from monarchy to republic which then was subverted :)

<comment><USER9> > are emotions (love, hate, agony, fear) evil?

I am not a Star Wars guru, but I always took it as allowing your emotions to control you led you to do evil deeds and become evil. After all, a purely emotional being will be selfish, vengeful, and a whole host of other negative things. Love, anger, hate and fear are selected in the movies because they are typically the most powerful emotions, and the most capable of consuming you and causing you to act rashly and out of character.

The Jedi went to the extremes in their personal beliefs (avoiding love and anger etc) to avoid the 'slippery slope' downwards.

This is, of course, just my take on the matter.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, but isn't the other extreme (cold-blooded, heart of stone) just as dangerous or even more so?

What's stopping us from killing our neighbors even when instincts of self- preservation kick in?

I mean, while watching documentaries on serial-murderers, it's always baffling noticing how disconnected with their victims or other human beings they are or how little regret they have.

I think moral standards are highly interconnected with feelings, and that's why it seemed weird to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> But isn't that true for all of us? We are _all_ born wild, and unrestrained, and emotive. And as we grow we're taught to control our urges, to be more responsible, to practice restraint, and patience, and understanding.

And as surely as we're taught to control our carnal selves, so the Jedi are taught to kill ...

(At this point I stop writing because I realize that I'm now attempting to justify genocide).

Damn. This guy is good.

<comment><USER11> It's not genocide. It's based on a conscious religious decision, not innate genetics.

<comment><USER12> gen·o·cide /ˈdʒɛnəˌsaɪd/

–noun

the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.

<http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/genocide>

<comment><USER11> I had thought of "geno-" as genetics, but Latin gēns can mean tribe or clan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A Leo Strauss-style variation of the argument is here:

[http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2005/05...](http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2005/05/the_public_choi.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> Surprisingly poignant.

<comment><USER15> Surprisingly _ignorant_ about what the word "Genocide" means.

The Sith were not a people. Calling their prosecution "genocide" is like calling the death penalty in the USA a "genocide against murderers".

<comment><USER16> Well, first of all I'll take offense to _The Sith were not a people_.

Who gave you the right to decide who is people and who is vermin (or whatever you mean by that statement).

Secondly, who gives you the right to decide who lives and who dies. That is a very slippery slope and similar arguments have been used since as long as humans have been on this planet to prosecute and terminate whoever didn't agree with the majority.

 _Edit: According to some replies below I seem to have misunderstood the above objection as the claim is that Sith were not "a people" as in were not a group/race/etc. but more like 1-2 persons who were terminated. If that is the case, I formally withdraw my above objection, else it still stands._

<comment><USER17> Pretty sure I remember reading or seeing that there's only ever two Sith at any given time.... that's not even mass-murder let alone genocide?

<comment><USER18> As chops pointed out, that was only true during the Rule of Two. Before that, there was the Sith Empire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So, Shadows and Vorlons?

</comment><comment><USER20> Step away from the computer.

Go outside

Look at the sky

Breathe in the air.

Realize this is not real ......

<comment><AUTHOR> No one is saying it IS real. What's wrong with using fiction to explore facets of reality? It's an idea that the entire category of "the arts" is based upon.</comment></comment>


Tell HN: App Store Doesn't Close When You Download an App - <AUTHOR>

The Apple gods have listened. When you download an app in iOS6, the app store doesn't autoclose.<p>Apple- if you're reading this, I haven't said anything else, so please don't take away my dev license. <comment><USER2> Any other significant changes to the store?

As for the downloads - it's on their official iOS6 intro page, so it's not behind the nda :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Completely new design. Featured page is horrible, but everything else seems like an improvement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You can install StayOpened from Cydia to get the same functionality on iOS 5.</comment>


Show HN: How can I make this diagram better? – thanks a trillion :)) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vangav/vos_backend#in-a-nutshell <comment><USER2> Instead of everything being a white rectangle, make the shapes meaningful representations of what's written inside them. Perhaps include logos or little icons.

Varying colors in a meaningful way can also be helpful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Many thanks for your feedback, I'll do that.

What do you generally think about the project (vangav backend), do you find it useful for you or any of your friends?

<comment><USER2> I am a _huge_ fan of declarative everything, starting with infrastructure. Extending it to database schema and business logic would be absolutely amazing.

I haven't used Java in years, so it's hard to comment on specifics. Do I understand the goal correctly?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, pretty on point (Y)

Would be super awesome if you shared it with your friends who may find it useful :))</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Porting Retro City Rampage to MS-DOS: From PS4 to 1.44MB Floppy - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSKeWH4TY9Y <comment><USER3> More info for those interested:

I ported Retro City Rampage to MS-DOS! - <USER2> [https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/3fdf8j/i_port...](https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/3fdf8j/i_ported_retro_city_rampage_to_msdos_ama/)

Retro City Rampage 486, MS-DOS Retail, 3.5" Floppy Disk Box Set (SOLD OUT) [http://www.retrocityrampage.com/msdos_retail.php](http://www.retrocityrampage.com/msdos_retail.php)

Digital versions still available for download: [http://vblank.com/store.php](http://vblank.com/store.php)</comment>


At U.K. Parliament, Long-Forgotten Secret Passageway Is Discovered in a Wall - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2020/02/28/810345171/long-forgotten-secret-passageway-discovered-in-a-wall-at-u-k-parliament <comment><USER2> Related:

Secret doorway in UK Parliament leads to historical treasure trove (bbc.co.uk)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22421365](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22421365)

</comment><comment><USER3> The door to the passageway was installed in 1950. It's not _that_ long- forgotten, especially relative to the building it's in which is more than 1000 years old.

</comment><comment><USER4> In the video they showed on the BBC the 'secret' door had a keyhole in the wooden panel, not exactly super secret.

</comment><comment><USER5> This shouldn't have been overlooked by security officers.

<comment><USER6> What do you want them to do? X-ray the building?

<comment><USER7> It's only 70 years old, it should be on plans of the building or someone probably remembers it...

<comment><USER6> > it should be on plans of the building

But it wasn't.

<comment><USER7> > The team was at the Historic England Archive poring over some 10,000 > uncatalogued documents relating to the palace when they found something > interesting: plans for a doorway in the cloister behind Westminster Hall.

> Back at the palace, they found that tiny keyhole in the wood paneling — just > where the plan suggested it would be.

The plans existed, were just uncatalogued.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is your personal knowledge management system? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I use my own opensource application, Contextualise ([https://contextualise.dev/](https://contextualise.dev/)). But, also check out this list of knowledge graph / second brain / digital gardening resources, here: [https://github.com/brettkromkamp/awesome-knowledge- graph](https://github.com/brettkromkamp/awesome-knowledge-graph)

</comment><comment><USER3> I use org-mode in emacs:

* For scratch notes I have a little bit of elisp I wrote to take a note title and file it into a year/month folder with day prefix

* For permanent notes I use org-roam with a zettelkasten-like method. I do one idea per note and link each new note into a couple other notes that seem relevant.

* todo.org for concrete tasks

* inbox.org for anything of interest to process later. I use beorg on my phone to add to this.

* contacts.org for birthdays

I also use SuperMemo 18 for incremental reading, a general deck for facts I deem important, and a deck for my Russian learning. I haven't totally figured out this piece yet though, and there's a nuance to what goes into my zettelkasten and what goes into my spaced repetition decks.

</comment><comment><USER4> My brain.

Which is true :-) ... but maybe more what you are asking: a todo.txt file, as well as my personal website with my public writing -- that's as much for my memory/knowledge as anyone else's.

<comment><USER5> I agree the brain is the most powerful computer. No matter that the computers can compute so much faster and blah blah. The brain. I do need to write things down or draw things down. That helps with recall. Remember that Humans are really using a tiny percentage of our Brains. We have untapped potential.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I use Trello. Its columns show different categories:

\- Column1: Useful tools and Interesting startups (Cards: B2B, B2C, personal, etc.)

\- C2: Blog ideas (and helpful resources for them)

\- C3: Entertainment list (tv series watch list, my fav movies, weird directors, etc.)

\- C4: To learn list (Articles, books, etc by their subjects)

\- C5-10: Learned items (important things i learned sorted by subject and finished time)

</comment><comment><USER7> Joplin.

I tried more involved approaches like knowledge graphs and wikis but found I spent more time researching and setting up these things than actually using them.

The simplest way for me to store and retrieve info I need is to be able to dump it into a .md and search over everything.

I do like the idea of having a personal wiki, but right now I don't have enough depth of information to warrant the transfer. Anything that I need in depth information is usually already in a wiki somewhere, so I don't really see the point in duplicating the information.

</comment><comment><USER8> I use Tiddlywiki. [https://philosopher.life/](https://philosopher.life/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Chrome bookmarks. Folders.

</comment><comment><USER10> Airtable & Mindmap</comment>


Ask HN: What tool do you use to consume HN? - <AUTHOR>

Keeping track of news and comments is time consuming. How do other fellow hackers consume the content on this site?<p>hackerstream.com helps to soothe the pain but I'd like to know of any other tools. <comment><USER2> When I'm on the go, I frequently use Airlock's Hacker News app for Android. Best UX I've found so far.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.airlocksof...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.airlocksoftware.hackernews&hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER3> I tried most of the apps I could find in Google Play, and landed on Hacker News Droid. Clean UI and easy to use. [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.glebpopov....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.glebpopov.hackernews)

<comment> saiko-chriskun seconding this. awesome app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> On iPhone I use <http://cheeaun.github.com/hnmobile/landing/>

</comment><comment><USER5> <http://show-hn.com> visual feed of Show HN posts

</comment><comment><USER6> On the go: Pulse is the best. HN, Engadget, TNW, and TC all in one.

</comment><comment><USER7> Firefox.</comment>


Instaclan to help startup teams find members - <AUTHOR> http://www.instaclan.com Instaclan is a alpha stage startup that will help connect people interested in launching a new website, product, or idea. <comment><AUTHOR> Has anyone visited the site and looked at what it is about?</comment>


Apple raises MacBook Pro 15" prices without hardware changes - <AUTHOR> http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1853528

<comment><USER2> Didn't the euro depreciate lately? And since the Danish krone is pegged to the euro, maybe it's just an exchange rate adjustment?</comment>


Software Development And The Sunk Cost Fallacy - <AUTHOR> http://www.skorks.com/2010/04/software-development-and-the-sunk-cost-fallacy/

<comment><USER2> How did a reasonably good reiteration of the "sunk cost fallacy" and how it applies to software projects (and I am closely observing just such a project running at a client site at the moment) turn into a snipe at JavaScript? Strange company.

The problem with JavaScript (if there is one) is that you have to "get it" to use it. Unless you understand how it works and how variable scope works then it might seem arbitrary and unpredictable. JavaScript is not a sunk cost but a rich web asset!</comment>


Icons – Generate Icons Of All Sizes for iOS or Android App - <AUTHOR> http://iconographys.appspot.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> inspired by [http://makeappicon.com/](http://makeappicon.com/)</comment>


Facebook, Quant Fund Meltdown & the Techmeme Leaderboard - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/10/facebook_techmeme_money_tech.html

<comment><USER2> Good quote out of the article "The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed yet."

<comment><AUTHOR> _"... The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed yet ...."_

More than likely Tim O'Reilly quoting William Gibson. O'Reilly loves this quote because he uses it to identify new markets. I've often wondered where Gibson said this. It certainly wasn't in any Gibson book I've read. It is attributed to an NPR interview he made in 1999, "The Science in Science Fiction", November 30, 1999, 12min into the interview ~ <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1067220></comment></comment>


Google Glass' Women Problems - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/03/google-glass-women-problems/

<comment><USER2> It has nothing to do with the data, but one observation I would make is that women tend to be more style conscious than men when it comes to wearing a piece of clothing or an accessory.

I don't think Google Glass has a "women" problem so much so as they have a "style" problem (but saying "women" problem does help TC get all that juicy linkbait).

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the early adopters are usually primarily men, anyway. I suspect that only a relative handful of women are even aware of this statement. And by the time this is ready for the mass market, this gaffe – if it turns out to be that – will be completely forgotten/unknown.</comment>


A lightweight cryptocurrency portfolio tracker - <AUTHOR> https://coinval.co <comment><AUTHOR> [https://coinval.co](https://coinval.co)

\- 2,577 cryptocurrencies in database

\- realtime price updates

\- portfolios

\- alerts

\- dark theme

\- anonymity

\- no signup/signin required; data stored in our database; accessible via unique hyperlink

\- various currencies (USD, CAD, EUR)

\- marketcap</comment>


Macbook air Or Macbook pro - <AUTHOR>

I want to learn programming. i'm interested in C/C++, which macbook should i choose? <comment><USER2> Coming from a person who has owned both. I can say for sure that it just doesn't matter. Some will say that the pro has more ports and is more of a power beast, but given all that let me ask you the following. 1\. You are starting to program, consider yourself at least a few months out till you get into a world where you will start programming device drivers. 2\. When was the last time you actually used a dvd drive? Everything is on the internet or wirelessly available.

Most of the work that I have done, ranging from device drivers to now, distributed systems, my macbook air sufficed. Programming has never 'required' me to have a retina display. If you asked the question with the context of media or photo editing, my answer would be different.

My setup is as follows: 1\. Macbook air 11" (portability is the key) 2\. Apple wireless keyboard and mouse 3\. Apple 27" display connected via thunderbolt. (wired network). You may substitute with any other good monitor.

The desktop setup is just a plain must. Anyone who says 11" or 13" or even 15" is enough for working, has just never worked on a big screen long enough. It just increases your productivity by an order of magnitude. Imagine the time saved by having multiple windows/terminals and documentation right in front of you and not having to switch between the two.

So, to end it all. Get a decent compact machine that you can take with you, and use on the go. And get yourself a good desktop setup when you want to get serious stuff done. Also, the desktop setup (personally) focuses you into a simple and distraction free zone, allowing you to be more productive.

</comment><comment><USER3> You need to give us more to go on. You can program C/C++ on a Raspberry Pi without issue.

So clearly you aren't buying either machine to learn to program C/C++ on. Any PC or computer made in the last thirty years would be equally good for that.

So tell us your real requirements (e.g. gaming, DVDs, digital video, etc) and what you really do day to day (e.g. mobile users, "workstation replacement," etc)?

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't want to be seen as a troll, but for a development laptop System76 provide high quality but reasonably priced Ubuntu laptops.

You'll come to thank the Ubuntu / Debian package manager when it comes to setting up the dev env.. ;-)

<http://www.system76.com>

You could also of course run Ubuntu on IBM, Lenovo, Dell, Apple or any other manufacturers box.

<comment><USER5> I was happy with a System 76 pangolin a few years ago. Only problem was the battery life. I looked at their newer offerings, and they look nice. Does anyone have experience with System 76's newer models?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Depends on how much you want to spend. The Macbook Pro models generally have faster CPUs so you'll see a benefit there in terms of compilation time and general snappiness.

The MBP gives you the option of the Retina display though. My personal opinion is that that in and of itself is worth the extra cost :P. If you're going for the 13", be aware of the fact that it can be a little bit laggy when you're trying to something graphically intensive. Depending on your use case, you might be better off getting the standard MBP if that bothers you.

</comment><comment><USER7> The new 13" Pro w/ Retina is probably the most perfect incarnation of a laptop available now. Apple finally did away with the rarely used optical drive which means it weights only slightly more than the Air. The resolution of the retina is great. I've used several 15" MBP's and the 1440x900 was never satisfying.

It basically comes down to high resolution vs half a pound in weight. Almost all developers I've worked with, prefer higher resolutions so the choice is simple for me.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think if you have to ask, the Air (with memory maxed) will be fine. The Pro is a safe bet to.

Something to think about - if you are doing the majority of your work on the laptop screen, I do find its nice to have a 15".

I have a quad-core Linux desktop with 12gb of RAM. And an 11" Air with 4gb of RAM. For Java development I find them both adequate, unless I'm working with an 8gb dataset - but that might fall more into the testing category.

</comment><comment><USER9> Both laptops will be fine to learn programming in C/C++, the decision should be taken by other features or needs. The macbook pro offers more processing power, but if you want portability choose macbook air. If your only interest is learn to program I would recommend you to buy the macbook air.

</comment><comment><USER10> If you don't need to use any Mac OS specific software then you could get a Windows laptop, the hardware is generally cheaper.

If it must be an Apple then the Air is more than suitable for a bit of coding.

<comment><USER11> "If it must be an Apple then the Air is more than suitable for a bit of coding."

Why? I'm looking into getting an Apple laptop and don't know which to get. I'm leaning towards the MBP just because I'm getting into music production and the extra hard drive space would be nice to have but I would also use it for programming as well.

<comment><USER10> Like I said, the Air is more than suitable for coding however it might not be suited to music production, for that you might want a beefier machine.

<comment><USER11> I apologize. After re-reading that I definitely missed something when I made the post. I thought that you were saying that an Air would be better for programming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Given that you are learning, mobility could help you going to meetups, friends houses, et al, to learn. That said, the lighter the better. Go with a macbook air.

</comment><comment><USER13> After using an AIR the Pro feels super heavy. I believe the Air is just perfect considering I use lots of design softwares.

</comment><comment><USER14> probably doesn't matter too much. I like a pro because you can upgrade the HDD and ram on your own and avoid apple's insane upgrade prices

edit: the standard MBP, I've heard terrible things about the retina pros being generally laggy

</comment><comment><USER15> Macbook air works perfectly fine for me.

</comment><comment><USER16> Get the 13.3" MacBook Air.

</comment><comment><USER17> pro.</comment>


_why's Twitter account has been claimed - <AUTHOR> http://www.twitter.com/_why

<comment><USER2> My gut reaction is not outright outrage, but I /do/ feel uncomfortable with this. I think I would have preferred not knowing this happened... somehow it's offensive to me, even though I can't point at anything and say, "That's objectively immoral or wrong."

Perhaps it's just too soon.

<comment> X-Istence I was just linked to this reply by a friend of mine, and indeed it doesn't feel right. It feels wrong that someone else is using _why.</comment></comment>