Ask HN: Review my project: Using unicode to break Twitter's 140 char limit - <AUTHOR>

I was thinking about unicode the other day, and I realized the look-alike characters could be used to bypass Twitter's 140 letter limit, so I put together this little app.
As far as I know, this is the first time anyone's written an app to exploit unicode this way. I looked at a bunch of other "tweet shorteners", but none of them really delivered.
I figure if people will switch URL shorteners to save a few letters, they might find this useful, too.
http://tweetcompressor.com/ <comment><USER2> Haha, it's clever. Did you limit the list of compressable characters by frequency? Since there seem more of them; U+3370-33DF range (from which you took 'ms', 'ns', 'cc' etc) also has 'da', 'bar', 'in', 'log', 'mil', 'mol', 'ha', 'gal' etc. Also U+32CD 'erg' U+2480-249B and U+1F101-1F10A has digit(s) + punctuation (i.e. '1.' ... '20.' and '0,' ... '9,')

I wonder how these play with searches, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> I had to restrict myself to combinations that show up properly on most computers. I actually did a big user test, and had about 20 different people send me screenshots of unicode glyph tables, so I could see what worked and what didn't.

<comment><USER2> Awesome. You might want to note so somewhere in the site? I guess I'm not the only one who wants to make the comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I really like your idea and the simple effectiveness of your design. I personally am very put-off by Twitter's character limit (not that I use it anyways). I hope it gets some users, maybe try to contact a popular platform or create an API to integrate with other existing services? I guess that depends on if you're just trying to fix a problem and get your name out or generate revenue.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Link: <http://tweetcompressor.com/>

</comment><comment><USER4> Clever idea,however the compression ratio doesn't seem to be enough to make a real difference; try㏌g it a few times,this will only save you few characters.

(Saved 4 char in this comment)

</comment><comment><USER5> Very clever.Nicely done.

<comment><USER5> And if you carefully examine my parent comment, you'll find that it works here on HN.</comment></comment>


Design for Non-Designers: Part 1 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@limedaring/design-for-non-designers-part-1-6559ed93ff91#.xn8t1k954 <comment><AUTHOR> I'm the author of the article, happy to answer any questions anyone has!</comment>


The Washington Post has been sold to Jeff Bezos for $250 million - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/romenesko/status/364484321434165248 <comment><USER2> More details: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/washington-post-to- be...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/washington-post-to-be-sold-to- jeff-bezos/2013/08/05/ca537c9e-fe0c-11e2-9711-3708310f6f4d_story.html?hpid=z1)</comment>


What is going on with Stumbleupon? - <AUTHOR> http://siteanalytics.compete.com/stumbleupon.com/

<comment><USER2> Oh, that's easy. Sites like Compete don't know shit about shit. For further details:

[http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/experts-misunderestimate- our-...](http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/experts-misunderestimate-our- traffic.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> The description seems like it's for another website:

StumbleUpon

San Francisco, California United States stumbleupon.com We provide technical consulting, training, and information services to build capacity, share knowledge, and support local government in the implementation of sustainable development at the local level. Our basic premise is that locally designed initiatives can provide an effective and cost-efficient way to achieve local, national, and global sustainability objectives. ICLEI was founded in 1990 as the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives. The council was established when more than 200 local governments from 43 countries convened at our inaugural conference, the World Congress of Local Governments for a Sustainable Future, at the United Nations in New York.

</comment><comment><USER4> Neither <http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/stumbleupon.com> nor <http://www.quantcast.com/stumbleupon.com> show anything nearly as dramatic...

</comment><comment><USER5> SU's own recent blog post about their traffic: <http://www.stumbleupon.com/sublog/20-million-stumblers/>

<comment><USER6> I wonder if there is a correlation between the increase of traffic and the launching of their link shortener <http://su.pr>?

<comment><USER7> If I remember correctly there was a minor bump with the release of su.pr, but the recent growth has been correlated mainly with their mobile applications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm not sure of the accuracy of complete's site analytics.

<comment><USER9> I have compared Compete's numbers to actual data from about 150 sites.

On that sample the numbers were never higher than actual and on average the Compete numbers were 2-3x lower than the actual numbers.

So I have used it as a reasonable estimate for half of the traffic a site sees. Although I may be placing my foot in my mouth because the stats for HN don't quite seem accurate: <http://siteanalytics.compete.com/news.ycombinator.com/>

<comment><USER10> Some of my sites receive 10 to 100 times more traffic than reported by compete.

<comment><USER9> Are they sites with less than 20,000 uniques per month? I've found those to be the outliers in my data set. They're wildly off on "low" traffic sites but have been a decent yardstick for sites getting more than 20k uniques in my limited experience.

<comment><USER10> No, more like 50,000-150,000 (depending on the month).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Google trends shows a recent uptick also, particularly in Ireland:

[http://www.google.com/trends?q=stumbleupon&geo=irl&s...](http://www.google.com/trends?q=stumbleupon&geo=irl&sa=N)

<comment><USER12> You can also measure websites in google trends:

[http://trends.google.com/websites?q=stumbleupon.com&geo=...](http://trends.google.com/websites?q=stumbleupon.com&geo=all&date=all)

They don't have the data for Ireland, but there's no uptick here for "All Regions".

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Weird -- today my 68 year old mother asked me if I had heard of it and that she loved it. She mentioned it was great for foodie sites. The compete numbers may be exaggerated but it seems to strike a chord across a broad audience.

</comment><comment><USER14> I wonder who the demographics are of the people who use StumpleUpon. I don't know anyone who uses it, and no one ever really talks about it, but somehow they manage to put up these huge traffic numbers that keep growing. It would just be interesting to see how they're growing outside of the standard echo chamber.

<comment><USER15> I think it's just the 'ordinary' people. Analytics tells me stumblers spend little time on my site, and my anime articles do the best (as compared to the philosophy or programming articles), so...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Well, they are definately not stumbling</comment>


Mondo 2000 Issue 2 (1990) - <AUTHOR> https://archive.org/details/Mondo.2000.Issue.02.1990 <comment><USER2> Fondly I remember devouring each issue of Mondo 2000 as if it held some grand promise of future about to happen.

I even bought some "Smart Drugs" and techno t-shirts but it was all for nought.

Even more than Wired, Mondo 2000 was this techno fetish fantasy that was never going to happen.

In some respects I am reminded of a line of Victor' Pelevin's from "Generation P" where the writer for this high concept underground magazine is in reality a balding father of three with a mortage and 4 starving mouths to feed.

<comment><USER3> To be honest, I long for the Mondo2000 vision of technology and culture. It seems very quaint and interesting next to the "campus dweeb" culture of Snap, FB, etc.

I have immense nostalgia for the early days of computers, when they were sold in carpeted showrooms with brochure racks by guys who needed a haircut. Those guys were changing the world forever! That heady time continued until right around when Wired replaced M2K.

<comment><USER4> I'm reminded of "The Guy I Almost Was" [1].

[1] [http://www.electricsheepcomix.com/almostguy/](http://www.electricsheepcomix.com/almostguy/)

<comment><USER5> Another way you can mark the descent of Internet culture into low-effort trash is the rapid decline in the artistic quality of web comics. We went from this to badly drawn sneering blobs, stick figures, and memes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Old guy here... I always thought of M2k as a text heavy, Heavy Metal. And Heavy metal is still going.

As an aside... There is a show of 40 years of Heavy Metal art and such in Santa Monica, CA through Aug. 19, 2017 at the Copro Gallery.

</comment><comment><USER7> Wow. Thanks for posting. Reading MONDO 2K after a 20 year hiatus is a real kick in the eye.

My gut reaction is that "Artificial Reality" culture has not served us as well as a more pragmatic vision of the future may have. There is no doubt deep learning, crypto-anarachy, CRISPR, 3D printing in the extreme environment of low earth orbit and many other current wonders were forecast in these pages. But the prophetic illusion that war, poverty, disease, and crime would evaporate away with accelerating growth seems tragic.

If a new imprint, say MONDO 3k, were to be started today, a little less airtime devoted to pirate punk rock cable access shows and a bit more on how to solve the problems of displaced workers via automation would be welcome.

Oh, and just on page two, already spotted an Easter Egg. The Reduce Productivity with Fractools, an electric kaleidoscope of nature's geometry ad. Distributed by a "Bourbaki, Inc." Named no doubt after the legendary secret math collective in 1930s France!

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

Craving even more 1990s alternative nostalgia? Remember Re/Search magazine? Publisher of J. G. Ballard and much more. They have a podcast that mostly consists of talking about the good old days ;)

[https://www.researchpubs.com/category/podcast/](https://www.researchpubs.com/category/podcast/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow - the first thing that hit me was a strong feeling of nostalgia for PageMaker and Quark. I could almost smell a laser printer.

</comment><comment><USER9> A must-read for the uninitiated: "A history of Mondo 2000" [1]

[1] [https://totseans.com/totse/en/ego/literary_genius/mondo2k.ht...](https://totseans.com/totse/en/ego/literary_genius/mondo2k.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> Coincidentally, EXTROPY magazine and its associated brand of techno- libertarianism was more reflective of where we have actually ended up. I have an old issue from 1995 that focuses on digital money that more or less advocates what we know now as cryptocurrency, including an imaginary monetary unit called Hayeks. With that said, stuff like cryonics and immortality is still pretty marginal.

<comment><USER11> The Extropians and Cypherpunks mailing lists had a fair bit of overlap in temperament with Mondo 2000 and with each other. They're also easier to search.

Extropians archive: [https://github.com/macterra/extropians](https://github.com/macterra/extropians)

Cypherpunks archive: [https://github.com/Famicoman/cypherpunks-mailing-list- archiv...](https://github.com/Famicoman/cypherpunks-mailing-list-archives)

It's fun, sometimes a bit depressing, to search those archives for years that have now passed and see what people expected by now. ( _ag "by 201"_, _ag "by 200"_)

Serious underdelivery so far on:

\- Molecular manufacturing

\- Increasing single-thread performance of desktop computers, with ever- growing clock speed

\- Robotics outside of industrial facilities

\- Therapeutic breakthroughs in medicine from genomics

\- Encrypted and networked communications revolutionizing politics/society

You might object that most of these developments, dimly foreseen in the 1990s, are actually significant in this decade in some form. But you have to go back to the originals to appreciate just how quantitatively aggressive the predictions were. (10 GHz desktop CPUs by 2014. Followup in the same discussion: No, the clock speed will be twice that, and arrive before 2010!)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, my repo! Thanks for mentioning Extropians, haven't heard of that one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I had all these, bought on the newsstand, and Wired back to issue 1. At some point I just had to clean house, during a move, and they all went. Mondo 2000 was both inspiring and, even to me back at the time, a little bit laughable, especially the fashion parts. But fun.

</comment><comment><USER13> Amazing how little as changed. Back then, just like today, the magazine was talking about cold fusion, data clouds, 'artificial light' aka VR/AR, viral marketing, and teledildonics.

</comment><comment><USER14> Took me a minute to realize you could actually flip through the pages (just click on the pages). Nice little feature.

</comment><comment><USER15> Hmm, the article on page 21 about the "cyberpunk computer" seems to describe RPi and similar.

</comment><comment><USER16> Man, I loved that magazine, back in the day.</comment>


The strange tale of the unauthorized albums of the Beatles Christmas recordings - <AUTHOR> https://dangerousminds.net/comments/the_strange_tale_of_the_unauthorized_albums_of_the_beatles_christmas_record <comment><USER2> Is this a joke? A troll? I can't believe I just read that whole article to discover at the end they are trying to sell a modern "authorized" reissue of the Beatles' Christmas albums.

With those graphics featuring Brush Script MT?!

It's a submarine of Christmas caliber.</comment>


Corporate Culture in Internet Time (2000) - <AUTHOR> http://www.strategy-business.com/article/10374?gko=48515 <comment><USER2> Still true and accurate, not dated at all except for the mention of Bill Gates. This could easily have been written today.

<comment><AUTHOR> I got several paragraphs in before the discussion of the 1999 Christmas season made me realize that it _wasn 't_ from today.</comment></comment>


Collabora Brings LibreOffice Online to OwnCloud - <AUTHOR> https://owncloud.org/blog/libreoffice-online-has-arrived-in-owncloud/ <comment> stp-ip Compared to the last version of online document editing in ownCLoud... this might actually be usable.</comment>


Seven people who hold the keys to worldwide internet security (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/28/seven-people-keys-worldwide-internet-security-web <comment><USER2> That ceremony is just security theatre.

See [https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2016/10/27/14-dns-nerds-dont- con...](https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2016/10/27/14-dns-nerds-dont-control-the- internet/)

<comment><USER3> I don't really understand his criticism of dane, given that lets encrypt allows anyone controlling dns to get certs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Prior comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7318558](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7318558)

</comment><comment><USER5> this article is about DNSSEC

</comment><comment><USER6> hahah! dan!

Thankfully Dan alone can't release the weapons. They're easy to get. They're around his neck and he's a lightweight.</comment>


Hall of api shame: boolean trap - <AUTHOR> http://ariya.ofilabs.com/2011/08/hall-of-api-shame-boolean-trap.html

<comment><USER2> Interesting article. I would help if all of the links worked. I found 3 that did not, returning the message "This domain is registered for one of our customers" (CloudDNS). These were the links under qt.nokia.com</comment>


Tax haven in the heart of Britain (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.newstatesman.com/economy/2011/02/london-corporation-city <comment><USER2> Seems to be a lot of complaining about the City of London's semi-autonomous status, without actually explaining why this is a bad thing. I've always thought it was just an odd historical quirk. They're still subject to the general laws of the country, still subject to the same taxes and regulations.

The articles main complaint seems to be about banks and other financial bodies using offshore tax havens, but that has nothing to do with the City's odd status. That could happen - and does happen - anywhere in the world...

<comment><USER3> Yep. The City is in every way entirely subject to parliament, and the laws of the country apply within the square mile in every particular the way they do outside it.

The biggest oddity is that since so many people commute into the City, they don't just let residents vote in council elections, but also businesses in proportion to the number of workers they have; an odd but not altogether crazy way of making sure that all stakeholders are represented.

...what any of this has to do with offshore tax havens is a mystery to me. There's only one FSA in Britain, and they don't care where you're headquartered.

Edit: From the article: "the corporation is an offshore island inside Britain, a tax haven in its own right. The term "tax haven" is a bit of a misnomer, because such places aren't just about tax."

Actually, it's not that it's not _just_ about tax; it's that it's not about tax at all. Tax rates are the same in and outside the City. A "tax haven" that's not a haven and doesn't have different tax rates? This is Orwellian stuff.

<comment><USER4> Sorry but businesses getting to vote based on the number of workers they have sounds insane and totally undemocratic.

There is a tendency on the internet to downplay the significance of democratic principles and to consider them as quaint, liberal or at odds with libertarianism. Worrying imo.

<comment><USER5> It is literally a single square mile. Nobody's sense of democratic principals should extend so far as to say a single square mile cannot choose to govern itself a little differently.

There are 7,000 actual residents in the City of London and more than 300,000 people work there. To give the huge imbalance of people who work but don't live there a voice in government a mere 16000 non-resident votes are also allowed and divied up to businesses with respect to their size. For the boring local government services provided, this is more than fair.

Also, in general the people who live (especially) and the people who work in the City of London are fabulously wealthy. My heart doesn't bleed for their lost electoral rights (not that I actually believe that the system is unfair) and they all seem pretty okay with it anyway.

<comment><USER4> If the people who work there "got a voice in government" that would be quite a bit better. According to the article that's not the case: Corporate management of "Goldman Sachs and the People's Bank of China" would be calling the shots.

Not sure if I understand where you are coming from. How can you not see a _fundamental_ problem with the situation (even if "people are rich" and "just a square mile" would make this _particular_ situation less severe)?

Would you be ok with an expansion of this system to other areas? How do you feel about democratic ideas in general?

<comment><USER6> Do you think that the board of trustees for a university should be elected by those students and others living on university owned property? Many universities own far more than 1 square mile, they are essentially mini-cities with their own police, courts, etc. Is it a fundamental problem that universities are not run as democracies?

<comment><USER4> I'll leave this question unanswered as I don't have knowledge about the type of university you are talking about (mine had no own police). If you are truly curious about this topic, your question has probably been thorougly dealt with in literature in the last 100 or 200 years.

If you just put that there to weaken my argument, I'd say let's stay with the topic at hand. We were discussing a local government that's nominally run as a democracy but where corporations have the votes, potentially part of a trend to less democracy if we are not careful (see protesting in the USA, blogging in Russia etc.).

<comment><USER6> I am actually interested in your psychology.

I have a sort of a long term career dream of starting a community/small city as a startup. Such a community would necessarily not be run as a democracy. I have found that there exist "true believers" in democracy, who view it is morally problematic for any community to not be a democracy. Yet such true believers tend to be quite inconsistent in their beliefs - they very rarely complain about college campuses, remote company towns, military bases, research facilities, etc, not being run as democracies. I am thus very interested in how people draw distinctions - what makes it ok for one community or mini-city to be a democracy but not another, where is line? And in designing my city some day - how can I avoid setting off people's triggers whereby they denounce a certain government structure for not being democratic?

<comment><USER7> _> what makes it ok for one community or mini-city to be a democracy but not another, where is line?_

There isn't one, really. Which is why the Soviet system instituted formally- democratic assemblies in any entity. In principle, it was a great idea; in practice, these bodies were soon hijacked by professional political operatives from The Party, who would steer them in the "right" direction and use them as another tool of control (speak up against the Party line in your factory soviet, and you'd soon be on a train to Novosibirsk). For other insights into that particular form of organization, I'd recommend Bulgakov's "Heart of a Dog".

Whether the limits of the Soviet system where environmental or historical in nature (they didn't have the internet, say), it's an open debate for another day, but I mention it to define one extreme of the theoretical scale: anyone can vote on anything. At the other extreme, you have absolute monarchy: nobody can vote on anything.

Anything in between these extremes is not "absolutely democratic" or "absolutely undemocratic", which is why debate is so fragmented and dependent on specific circumstances. You can have profoundly-undemocratic organizations being run in a substantially democratic way by this or that specific leader, or formally-democratic institutions being run with an iron fist by a single individual.

I think that, pragmatically speaking, the most basic element of democracy is just the acceptance of the existence of feedback. If one is ostracised, isolated or punished for the simple act of expressing a differing opinion, people will feel that democracy is non-existent, that the game is rigged. On the other hand, if differing opinions are given substantial space and even co- opted by rulers, especially in times of crisis, the absence of formal democratic structures will be considered a purely theoretical problem and likely ignored in practice.

Others famously define the basic unit of democracy the answer to the question "can we replace our rulers without violence?". However, this sort of argument can be subverted by putting in place mechanisms for such a replacement and then, by other means, ensuring that they will never be invoked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For more background, these two videos are amazingly informative.

The City of London Explained (pt 1 and 2)

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqs5ohhass_QScZFYoQX-...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqs5ohhass_QScZFYoQX-7376-Zp654mH)

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the video, it was great :O

<comment><USER10> I highly recommend all of CGP's videos. They are all fun and very informative. I just started listening to his podcast "Hello Internet" which is also enjoyable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> TL;DR "The City of London" is an ancient city founded by the Romans who's been continuously governed by an embarrassingly complicated government that nearly puts the Catholic Church to shame, and is nearly as old. It to this day involves guilds.

The short version is that companies get the right to vote in this system. And do the high price properties are nearly the entire government.

This leads to an incredibly business friendly government.

<comment><USER12> Oh yeah. See their recent abuses of perceived power to shut down web sites they (or their supporters) don't like:

[https://www.techdirt.com/blog/?tag=city+of+london+police](https://www.techdirt.com/blog/?tag=city+of+london+police)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> As a UK citizen I think sorting out the channel islands, IOM and the other tax havens in the EU is probably more useful.

but of course that would upset powerful media owners according to one UK MP.

<comment><USER14> The Channel Islands and Isle of Man are not in the EU... thats one of the strangenesses. They should be forced to join.

<comment><USER15> It is the EU that is directly responsible for the "Dutch double sandwich" and various other tax dodging schemes. Lots of loopholes, we simply can't close, until we leave.

<comment><USER16> The EU is the only hope we have to balance the power of the city. What can a government of only 60 million, where one house is not even democratically elected, do against the might of world's finance system?

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure what the fact that one house is not democratically elected has to do with anything?

The point of an upper house is that it is supposed to be impartial to the whims of the voters. In the USA we originally had an appointed Senate and still to this day have an appointed Judicial system. Should supreme court judges be elected?

I have to say as a quasi-outsider (English raised in the USA) that more often than not I'm extremely impressed by what comes out of the House of Lords. For example their recent statement on the EU's right to be forgotten.

<comment><USER17> As an American ("no taxation without representation!") I've always... admired the House of Lords. They are able to say and do things which no elected politician can, and provide a sort of stabalizing feedback to the UK's parlimentarian system. Not unlike the relationship of the American congress with the appointed-judege court system.

I was sad when I found out that the House of Lords is in the process of being reformed, with membership moving from peerage to either elected or elected- appointed positions. I fear that this won't end well for Britain :(

<comment><USER7> The role of a second parliamentary chamber is hotly debated across the West at the moment.

Countries where both houses are elected and enjoy equivalent powers (like Italy or the US) complain that this arrangement slows down lawmaking, in an age where everything else is actually speeding up.

Countries where the second chamber is not elected, like Britain, experience a certain unease: they wage war oversea "to bring democracy", and then half of their lawmaking is in the hands of a completely undemocratic body with dubious legitimacy.

Countries where the second chamber actually represents different bodies from the electorate (like Germany) seem to have found a pragmatic third way, but then this chamber ends up over-representing certain interests (in Germany, local ruling classes and their nests of semi-private special businesses), which again is not really democratic in nature.

I think we'll have to learn again why balance is required in matters of such importance, and we'll probably have to learn it the hard way. The major supporters of "streamlined" government have always been tyrants and oligarchs, after all.

<comment><USER18> > Countries where the second chamber is not elected, like Britain, experience > a certain unease: they wage war oversea "to bring democracy", and then half > of their lawmaking is in the hands of a completely undemocratic body with > dubious legitimacy.

Its been quite a long time (more than a century) since the Lords could be said to hold anything like half the legislative power in the UK.

<comment><USER7> Until 2005, they had ultimate responsibility for the judiciary (although mostly on paper). Also, the review process _is_ half the lawmaking, although the most obscure half. All sorts of shenanigans can be slipped in through reviews, and compromises on sticky points can be "encouraged" by playing the timing card. The fact that the Commons can eventually steamroll the Lords doesn't mean that they always do, especially if majorities are weak.

<comment><USER18> The fact that the Commons can steamroll the Lords means the two aren't co- equal in power -- if they always did so, it would mean that the Lords had _no_ legislative power, not merely the significantly-less-than-half of the legislative power that they actually have had since the early 20th century.

<comment><USER7> I think we're saying the same thing here, really; whether "half the lawmaking" is 45% or 50% is a technical point that is basically irrelevant in practice.

My original comment related to very pragmatic situation of acting as "champions of democracy" while still maintaining a very significant role in the lawmaking process for a wholly-undemocratic body. It's a real problem that has not been solved and significantly weakens British arguments in, say, foreign policy and cultural debate.

<comment><USER17> Who says that democracy has to be 100%? If you want to get technical, we all live in republics anyway, not direct democracies.

I know I am an outlier, but it seems a totally strange and foreign concept to me that one could criticize the UK for being hypocritical in promoting democracy abroad because of the House of Lords.

<comment><USER7> _> If you want to get technical, we all live in republics anyway_

No "we" don't (dunno about you but I live in a constitutional monarchy, which is a fairly popular form of government in Europe, and it just ain't a republic in any technical sense).

 _> it seems a totally strange and foreign concept to me that one could criticize the UK for being hypocritical in promoting democracy abroad because of the House of Lords._

You should visit the Middle-East sometimes, but even just France would be an eye-opener I think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> They are the last of the rotten boroughs.

They should be merged with tower hamlets next door, which has a very high poverty rate.

They are not voted in by the people, but the various guilds within their boundries.

</comment><comment><USER20> The City of London Corporation is the number one reason to vote Yes for Scottish independence. The concept of the Remembrancer should be utterly repugnant to anyone who believes in democracy over facism.

Edit: And I'll note that this was voted down before I even had a chance to fix my spelling! Guess the money spent on "social media consultants" was worthwhile guys, huh?

<comment><USER20> Oh, and I'm going to be mentioning the Corporation a lot over the next month, in letters to the local press and messages online. The downvotes have motivated me :)</comment></comment>


Everyone's Getting Hilariously Rich and You're Not - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/13/style/bitcoin-millionaires.html?mtrref=www.google.com&gwh=7265BD557A47396F312075DDFEA80938&gwt=pay <comment><USER2> A housekeeper who invested $12k in cryptocurrencies in the past few weeks is quoted as saying:

 _"And maybe I'm going to lose it," she said. "Maybe I'm going to keep cleaning houses. But something is telling me I can trust this generation. My instinct is telling me this is the future."_

This time is different?

Personally I don't feel any regret in ignoring the whole thing, even though I've known about Bitcoin since pretty much day one (thanks to HN of course). I look at the people who are crypto enthusiasts and it's obvious that I would have to be a completely different kind of person to be in the game.

In that sense it's no different from Wall Street traders, YouTube personalities, real estate agents or multi-level marketers -- I don't envy their financial successes either because I wouldn't want their lives (and even if I wanted it, I would most likely fail hard at the job because of personality mismatch).

<comment><USER3> I still haven't found a way to buy crypto, and at this point am unlikely to ever do so. I suspect the money is in the hands of people that were already lucky somewhere in the first world and fairly rich before starting out.

As the article says, someone apparently 'invested' the meager sum of $400000 and is now super rich.

But people can only stay this rich as long as none of the initial investors (e.g. the ones with a disproportional amounts of tokens) hold their stuff.

It still feels like a multilevel marketing scheme to me. It'll only stay great as long as people keep buying more and for higher prices.

<comment><USER4> People from literally every social circle I have—friends, coworkers, family—are talking about crypto currency. Not one of them has made a compelling case as to its value. I tend to like the Matt Levine take: maybe cryptocurrency really IS groundbreaking technology and will change the world, and yet in our lifetimes maybe most of the market will be bogus pyramid schemes. (He compares it to the early days of stock trading; the idea of stock and limited liability really did change the world, but most of the early days were centered around scams.) But yeah, when everybody and their brother is talking about it, I have a hard time believing there are a lot of good investment opportunities left. When the shoeshine boy is giving you stock tips...

<comment><USER5> I've often heard that the US Dollar gets its value in part because it is the only thing you can use to pay taxes. And even if only a small percentage of US Dollars is used to pay taxes, that is enough to drive the rest of the value.

When someone gets hit with a crypto virus, if they don't have backups then the only way of getting their data back is to pay the ransom using cryptocurrency. And participation in black markets is based on the same. So even if that is overall only a small percentage of the use of cryptocurrency, it should be enough to drive at least part of its ongoing value.

So my question is, does this idea (or either idea) have any merit?

<comment><USER4> It does. Another alternative is that nation states "impart" some of their fiat value because they will potentially subsidize some speculative activity if the whole thing implodes via consumer protections or whatever. The thing that is interesting about Bitcoin is that it holds up a mirror to the largely illusory nature of "value" and money, which are sort of a shared mass illusion anyway. But it's certainly different than the dollar insofar as fiat currencies are backed up by all of the powers of a state: as you mentioned the power to compel tax payments, and also the power to allow transactions within their borders etc. Fiat money in some sense is an embodiment of the power of the entity that issues it. Bitcoin has no power backing it, so its value, if it has any, has to come from something else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This articule just seems to revolve around some pretty skewed data.

> Recently the founder of something called Ripple briefly became richer than > Mark Zuckerberg.

Became paper richer, which is really quite different. The "market cap" calculations just don't represent reality; he couldn't realistically dump all of his Ripple and expect price to not crash (not even taking into account the huge natural correction in price after the peak of the bull run)

> The cryptocurrency community is centered around a tightknit group of friends

This statement implies that there are few people in the community at all, which is just not true.

> some estimate that 95 percent of the wealth is held by 4 percent of the > owners.

This links to an article that says that 95% of the wealth is held by 4% of the wallets, which makes an absolutely huge difference. This is because:

\- Some of these wallets are held by exchanges, who hold all of their users' crypto

\- Some of these wallets are lost early adopter wallets, from when a large number wasn't something impressive (e.g. Satoshi's lost Bitcoin, accounting for 4 million (!) Bitcoin)

\- Many of the wallets created are never used or have already been used just for moving funds and thus have 0 balance (in fact, the article's graph states that 41.93% of wallets hold just 0.01% of bitcoin)

<comment><USER7> _> Became paper richer, which is really quite different_

I hear this all the time but I don't understand it.

The Ripple guy's wealth isn't made of paper, it's an electronic ledger.

And if he trades his Ripples for dollars or euros, that wealth just moves to a bank's electronic ledger.

If he uses his dollars or euros to buy shares in Google or government bonds, the wealth moves to a broker's electronic ledger.

Then he sells his securities to buy real estate, and now his wealth is in an electronic ledger of property titles.

So in what way is cryptocurrency wealth "only paper wealth" but other wealth is somehow more substantial than "paper"?

<comment><USER8> Dollars, Euros, and stocks are all forms of highly liquid wealth which are generally trusted and can easily be exchanged for goods and services. They've all been around for many years and are backed by trusted entities. In comparison to Ripple they're much less volatile.

Ripple isn't any of that yet and the "wealth" can evaporate much more quickly if Ripple fails to gain those qualities.

<comment><USER7> _> They've all been around for many years and are backed by trusted entities_

That's so obvious it probably doesn't need to be stated.

The GP's argument is that cryptocurrency wealth is somehow lesser because it's "paper" wealth.

You didn't really answer how cryptocurrency is any more or less "paper-like" than other intangible assets.

<comment><USER8> Everything I mentioned in my comment is why it's less than other intangible assets. Not all intangible assets should be valued equally at their same level of converted fiat. The riskiness of an asset in particular is an important factor.

$100 of XRP is worth less to me than $100 of Google stock because it's 1) less liquid, particularly in times of crisis. 2) More likely to be worth $0.

<comment><USER7> What you're saying is so obviously true that it's virtually meaningless.

Of course XRP is less liquid than Google common stock and more likely to go to zero. XRP is also more likely than Google stock to increase 10x.

It's so obvious it should go without saying that some assets are more risky than others. Nobody would disagree.

If the price of your Google common stock doubles, is that not a "paper gain"? And if the price of your XRP is cut in half, is that not a "paper loss"?

All gains and losses in typical assets are "paper", so this seems to be a distinction without a difference.

<comment><USER8> It sounds like you're talking about a more binary approach to categorizing wealth. It either "is paper" or "is realized". To me, not all paper is created equal.

I see assets representing wealth as a spectrum. There are shades of paper wealth that make it closer to realized wealth than others. Google stock doubling is a paper gain that is more substantial than a paper gain in XRP because Google stock has larger current utility than XRP.

Everyone has different ways of calculating utility which impact how substantial they feel a gain in a certain asset is when compared to another.

That's my theory, how do you see things?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Kind of weird to watch.

It's almost the definition of swimming naked: a tightly knit group who have no source of income, relying on the promise of their illiqud assets, but burning their small amount of liquid wealth on lifestyle.

Wonder why people say it will end badly?

<comment><USER10> This is such a good description of what's happening!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > founder of something called Ripple briefly became richer than Mark > Zuckerberg

Want to try this at home? Create your own crypto. Sell one unit to your friend for $1. Create additional 1T units under your control. And voila! Same thing.

<comment><USER12> I have some shares, and every once in a while, the company appears to generate new shares out of thin air. Which to me, implies my share value will fall.

Admittedly I don't understand what's going on. [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/investing/shares/santander- rights...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/investing/shares/santander-rights-issue- everything-shareholders-need-know/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's amazing how people pretend to genuinely believe cryptocoins would change the world, but immediately describe so proudly their lavish lifestyle to prove their point. What exactly did they change? Attract and take advantage of the world greed doesn't look new to me...

<comment><USER11> That's what sells in articles. You aren't going to get an interesting article describing some guy who invested early in crypto but still spends days coding and trying improve the ecosystem or just build something, even unrelated to crypto. Not possible to get in touch with such people to write an article, not possible to find them.

That's where the bias is coming from that is shaping how many people perceive Bitcoin and crypto community in general. Those who want attention are more likely to get it.

Even the Pineapple Fund, briefly mentioned here, being as awesome as it is, doesn't get much recognition. Because it's not an interesting story. Specific people make interesting stories, preferably with pictures. And saying some controversial things.

But that's just how our brains work. Even though it's HN, we are both in this thread, while there are many more tech oriented Bitcoin articles in new that will never hit the frontpage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Recently the founder of something called Ripple briefly became richer than > Mark Zuckerberg

Excuse me as I just came back from 2005, but nothing says "everyone's getting hilariously rich and you're not" like the point of comparison being Mark Zuckerberg.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is the dumbest bubble.

I put in about $1000 and took out $1500. It's gambling, pure and simple. It's shits and giggles; I had my laughs and now I'm out.

Seriously though, the dumbest bubble. There's no value here. There's just greater fool speculation.

<comment><USER15> Same as stocks, same as gold, etc... the only difference is that there isn't an intrinsic base value.

<comment><USER16> That's a pretty big 'not the same'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Most aren't getting super rich, they're making a decent raise but you only get rich if you were very early on in the game

<comment><USER18> You could still make 19x if you invested in January 2017 and sold in December

<comment><USER19> That would be two big IF's.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Another bubble that passed me by, it seems. If I were one of these paper millionaires, I'd be investing in property and precious metals—there are a few companies that accept BTC for those.

</comment><comment><USER21> I wonder when the kidnappings will start? Pulling finger nails for wallet keys is a pretty lucrative business, if you're already in that world.

</comment><comment><USER22> Currently each digital currency is a wild ecosystem, a watering-hole that entices many herbivore investors and attract all manner of predators: hackers, scammers and rent seekers at the periphery.

</comment><comment><USER23> Pretty much every sentence in here is jokes, well trolled NYT:

"Over long hours in [..] Settlers of Catan game nights, they talk about how cryptocurrency will [..] [change] the world order.

"[..] There are only a few winners here, and [..] [they] also remember who laughed at them and when. [..] his Facebook post from 2014 telling everyone to buy ether. [..] "It got one like."

"[..] He said his closest friends are moving to Puerto Rico to get around paying taxes. [..] "They're going to build a modern-day Atlantis out there," he said. "But for me, it's too early in my career to check out."

"[..] "I was given this necklace and was told my net worth would go up, and it's gone up six x since then," he said.

"[..] Nearby is a building residents call the Crypto Crackhouse. [..] Long hallways called Bitcoin Boulevard and Ethereum Alley lead to communal bathrooms.

"[..] "My neurons are fried from all the volatility," [..] "I'm numb to it. I'll lose a million dollars in a day and I'm like, O.K."

"[..] "The worse regular civilization does and the less you trust, the better crypto does," Mr. Hummer said. "It's almost like the ultimate short trade."

"[..] There's a common paranoia among the crypto-wealthy that they'll be targeted [..] so many are obsessively secretive. [..] This also allows people to pretend to be wealthier than they are, of course.

"[..] They talk about buying Lamborghinis, the single acceptable way to spend money in the Ethereum cryptocurrency community.

"[..] "When I meet people in the normal world now, I get bored," Mr. Hummer said. "It's just a different level of consciousness."

"[..] "Sometimes I think about what would happen to the future if a bomb went off at one of our meetings," [..] "[that] would set back civilization for years."

"[..] James Fickel, 26, lives in a high-rise with a Russian blue cat called Mr. Bigglesworth. Mr. Fickel is known in the community for "going full YOLO" and investing $400,000 when Ethereum was at 80 cents. Now, with a fortune he says is in the hundreds of millions [..]

"[..] Today, Mr. Fickel is outlining the endgame for cryptocurrency true believers. [\n] "It's the entire world reorganizing itself," Mr. Fickel said. "We could get rid of our armies because for the first time you'll have people saying, 'I want to vote for a global order.' [..]" [..] Mr. Hummer is skeptical. [\n] "All I know is the price of ether is going to go up," Mr. Hummer said.

"[..] Nearby was Chante Eliaszadeh, 22, a law student [..] who started the Berkeley Law Blockchain group. [\n] "Obviously the bubble's going to burst and everyone's going to need a lawyer," she said.

"[..] As the holiday party filled up, a cryptocurrency rapper called CoinDaddy [..] was getting ready to perform. [\n] Formerly a commercial real estate agent, Mr. Bahmanyar works full time at CoinDaddy after becoming a self- described crypto-millionaire ("you think I would dress up like this if I wasn't?"). "Right now all our entertainers come from outside crypto culture — not inside crypto, and we've got to change that," he said.

^ LOL probably 2 best quotes of the article

\----

Serious points:

"[..] The goal may be decentralization, but the money is extremely concentrated. [..] 95 percent of the wealth is held by 4 percent of the owners.

"[..] Pieter Wuille, 33, a Bitcoin core developer, kept his backpack on as he wandered the party. [..] Mr. Wuille said. "This infusion of interest is bringing the wrong kind of attention. Some people believe Bitcoin can't fail or this technology solves many more problems than it does. [..]"

"[..] Maria Lomeli, 56 [..] [a] housekeeper from Pacifica, Calif., she said she had invested $12,000 in cryptocurrencies over the last few weeks after reading about it in the news. [..] She invested $1,000. It went up. So she put in $10,000 more, she said, along with $1,000 in a currency called Litecoin. Both her children have discouraged this. [..] "And maybe I'm going to lose it," [..] "[..] But something is telling me I can trust this generation. [..]" She had to leave the party early because parking downtown is expensive, she said. She zipped up her jacket and left on her own."

<comment><USER13> I kinda hope it's the "harsh realm" interview ([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grunge_speak](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grunge_speak)) of this generation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Money money money, pretty funny, in the bitcoin world.

</comment><comment><USER25> Many people, even within crypto-community, failed to recognize that _speculation is one of fundamental factors_ which bring _real value_ to cryptocurrencies.

To understand that you have to think about a concept called _self-fulfilling prophesy_ :

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self- fulfilling_prophecy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fulfilling_prophecy)

Bitcoin started as a fixed-supply currency. Fixed-supply attracted early speculators who are willing to put their fiat into gamble about future utility of Bitcoin.

As speculators started to trade, guys who sell drugs over internet got idea that they can use these new unknown strange tokens for transactions _because they could dump these weird tokens on speculators in exchange of fiats_.

So gamble about unknown future became reality which attracted even more speculators ([https://www.wired.com/2011/11/mf_bitcoin/](https://www.wired.com/2011/11/mf_bitcoin/)).

This in turn attracted wealthy people in countries like China because they wanted to move money out of their country.

Do you see here _a loop_?

If Bitcoin wouldn't have huge financial incentive for early adopters, then nobody would give a shit about these weird p2p internet tokens!

So key factors of early cryptocurrency value: speculation, war on drugs, excessive cross-border transfer regulation.

Since most people are politically left-wing, they can't get rid of negative bias towards words like speculation and bubble.

There are good bubbles and bad bubbles. Every bubble eventually burst but it doesn't automaticaly make them bad.

Dot-com bubble was good as it was wealth transfer towards programmers with lack of social skills. Some one them created something cool and interesting, some of them are don't.

2005-2008 housing bubble was bad as it was wealth transfer towards snobbish conservative bankers who live in their exclusive Wall-Street club protected from competitors by excessive regulation ironically supported by left-wing voters.

Cryptocurrency bubble is very good. It's not just wealth transfer towards programmers. It's wealth transfer towards _open-source protocol creators_. Of course, there will be clowns in the space but come on, it's life, nothing is perfect. It's way better bubble since in the center of this bubble some random nerds, not snobby privileged Harvard-type Lehman Brothers top managers.

<comment><USER26> > It's way better bubble since in the center of this bubble some random nerds, > not snobby privileged Harvard-type Lehman Brothers top managers.

You're being incredibly naive. Programmers are not the ones moving the needle on this bubble. They may have been the early adaptors, but it's the people with incredibly large sums of money who are making out like bandits.

<comment><USER25> You are either naive or troll or just don't understand crypto-market.

The whole beauty of crypto-market is that there is very low barrier of entry and at the same time very, very, very huge possible upside. This make possible for very small players to become bigger, much bigger.

On the other hand, traditional stock market is very efficient so you may hope for 20% per year at best. Therefore, 20% from approximately zero (say 1000 USD) is still zero. In this case, only wealthy people make money there, others suck collecting pennies.

I'm on this market, I'm programmer and I'm much more successful on this market than I could never dream of on any other market.

So if you didn't make any money on crypto-market, please, don't waste my time arguing with me.

<comment><USER27> > _Therefore, 20% from approximately zero (say 1000 USD) is still zero._

Only if you consider the market as a whole, but how is that useful? I'm actually pretty thrilled to be able to collect $200/yr based on doing nothing but putting up $1000 to start. I'm even more happy when I look at the volatility of cryptocurrencies, and also the fact that crypto isn't actually backing much in the way of economic activity; it's just doing some minor- league capital reallocation and burning several countries' worth of electricity.

Not saying I didn't mine a bit back in 2011 or so (and subsequently lost the wallet, doh) or that I'm not interested at all, but calling crypto an "investment" is laughable at best. It's a pure speculative play, only marginally better than a lottery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think this keeps getting reposted. Anyway, It's worth the read just for Coin Daddy.

<comment><USER29> Dupe indeed [1]

[1] [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Everyone%27s%20Getting%20Hilar...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Everyone%27s%20Getting%20Hilariously%20Rich%20and%20You%27re%20Not&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: One solution to the iPhone app pricing problem - <AUTHOR>

I started writing this as a response to http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2009/07/13/my-iphones-not-cheap-but-my-apps-are/ , but most other comments seemed to talk about the lack of marketing for that app. So I thought that this topic may merit a seperate discussion.
I'm curious to know what other people think about in-app purchases and using that as a solution for the pricing problem that plague most iPhone apps. -- My recommendation/solution for the problem: Release a low-priced app with a lot of value Then provide additional features at a fair price through in-app purchases.
The base app should be cheap (and packed with value). The cheap price should be able to address the entry barrier for customers and the app should convince users of the value of the app.
Customers who've tried out the base version of the high-value app will then be more inclined to a pay a "fair" price (as opposed to a super-cheap price) for incremental features. -- One risk with this approach is that some users who've purchased an app may be annoyed to find that some new features (in updates) aren't free. <comment><USER2> Interesting. This could provide price discrimination, solving the problem that an app is worth less to some people who don't use all the features -- those people just don't buy those features. OTOH it introduces mental transaction costs.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've had my iPhone for about six months and I've yet to find an app that I would pay even $0.99 for let alone $5-$20. Having an in-game upgrade option would not appeal to me. I'm likely different from most though - I want my phone for calls, browsing, music, email, and the occasional time-waster while sitting in an office waiting room. I don't want it to replace my computer.

<comment><AUTHOR> you mention music. Would you pay for music on your iPhone and have you looked at any of the apps in the "Music" category

<comment><USER3> No but I pay for music each month via an emusic.com subscription.</comment></comment></comment>


A Weekend MVP - <AUTHOR> https://leasary.com/blog/a-weekend-mvp <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone, I'm the author of the post. It was great fun hacking out this MVP in a weekend (from idea to advertising), if you have any questions please let me know!</comment>


What's the Easiest Programming Language I Can Learn - <AUTHOR>

Before you burn me at the stake, please hear me out. I'm a UX designer by trade; while not a developer, I do understand software and technology very well. I spend a lot of time testing and tinkering with ideas by trying to hack them together the best I can. My goal is to build a small but real feeling version of my idea to understand and test if there's actually value. I continually hit the wall or spend hours getting caught up on something trivial (I understand this is part of the learning process). Like for most people, time is an issue for me and I'm really looking for something to help me prototype quickly. I consider Ruby and Python too big for that (am I wrong)? What should I focus on, a Javascript framework, just jQuery, something like Haskell, etc.?<p>Advice? <comment><USER4> For discussing whether Python and Ruby are too big compared to Javascript or Haskell, I'd like to give you the following UX anaology.

You're a cashier at a bank and want to give the best experience for your customer, who just withdrew $248.67 from her account. The Python way would be to give this person two hundred dollar bills, two twenty dollar bills, a five dollar bill, a two dollar bill, a one dollar bill, a fifty cent piece, a dime, a nickle, and two pennies. Some one on the messge board will later tell you that the fifty cent piece has been deprecated and that you should have use two quarters. Also, the two dollar bill has performance issues and you should have just used two ones. It's pretty big and maybe not the best for your customer.

The Javascript way is much smaller and simpler. You'd just give the user 24,867 pennies. There's no variation in bills to memorize - just counting. You do get tired of counting after a while and your bank manager tells you a little secret. In the bank, there's premade bags in sizes of a ten thousand pennies, two thousand pennies, one thousand pennies, five hundred pennies, two hundred pennies, twenty-five pennies, ten pennies, and five pennies. So, you give the customer two ten thousand penny bags, two two-thousand penny bags, a five hundred penny bag, a two hundred penny bag, a one dollar bill, fourteen twenty five penny bags, a ten penny bag, a five penny bag, and two loose pennies.

You get tired of hauling all the pennies, so you decided to do things smaller and simpler. You do things the haskell way. You give the customer a two hundred forty-three dollar bill, a negative nine dollar bill, a three dollar bill, and a thirty-three cent piece. You require the customer to sign an oath stating that she won't just throw out the negative nine dollar, but will ensure that it is safely paired with a positive nine-dollar bill when it is returned to the bank for no value. For some reason, the thirty-three cent pieces are all in a drawer labelled "Monoid", and you're told it's because they're closed with the Yen under addition, as long as Japan keeps printing the zero Yen coin.

This isn't meant to be an attack on any of these languages. Any of them would be an excellent choice. The javascript way has a smaller number of denominations to memorize, but you wind up needing to learn a long list of premade baggies, which can make everything suddenly seem big. The Haskell way has a small, optimal set of denominations, but learning to figure out to put them together can make everything seem huge. The Python/Ruby way has more denominations than either, but some people think that they're easier to add up than the Haskell ones and more convenient to carry than the Javascript ones. So knowing which language is the smallest and easiest all depends on what you call small and easy.

<comment><USER5> this is a really great way of explaining how the language & compiler work, but doesn't really go into how easy it actually is to learn, syntax, etc

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Frankly, why not PHP? I'm happy to smirk along with the PHP hate that shows up on HN and elsewhere, but you hit save in your editor, reload in your browser, and you see the results of what you have done.

<comment><USER7> Haven't worked much with PHP, but there doesn't seem to be that much in terms of a 'style guide' so it just seems easier to write uglier/wrong code - <USER2> correct me if I'm wrong. I usually think it's best newbies start with languages that, in a way, enforce right and wrong ways of doing things (i.e. Rails convention over configuration approach), it just takes a lot of the initial guess work and uncertainty out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> From one non-programmer to another, I highly recommend Python + Django + a CSS framework to get up and running.

Python is a great language to get started on because the code is relatively simple to write and read (for very geeky reasons), and the MIT OpenCourseWare intro to CS for non-majors class is a great way to pick up as much "core" programming ability as you need. That class is taught in Python. Underrated perk: errors are easier to diagnose relative to JavaScript.

Once you have a rudimentary grasp of Python, do the Django tutorial and build yourself a sample app. Django is _the_ way to get up and going with a modern- ish MVC (model-view-controller; you'll see what it means) app. It's very easy to get going as a developer and the only headache you'll find is the Virtualenv thing. Easier than getting Rails (which is Django for Ruby) going for the first time, because Rails has the potential for more version conflicts.

Lastly, to build out web pages, consider Zurb Foundation or Twitter Bootstrap. These are premade CSS components that make building pages faster (thus good for "rapid prototyping"). They also bring along browser compatibility and jQuery for added UI niceness.

If you want to animate things on the page, search for animate.css.

I did this a couple years ago to build my first app and now I have a side project that I coded myself. You can do it! :D

</comment><comment><USER9> I think you're wrong to dismiss Python and Ruby; they're much more elegant than javascript (javascript fans will say its ugliness is superficial, but when you're starting out the superficial things matter), and not as complex as Haskell (complexity that will help you out once your program gets above ~10k lines, but will get in your way as you get started). I'm not sure where you're coming from with the "too big"; the core language syntax for Python is very small and simple, the reason the download is large is the large standard library. Which, again, is what you want as a beginner. (For a larger, more production-oriented project it's more important that there's a good standardized library system and project management tool, and to be honest the Python ecosystem falls down somewhat here. But by the time that becomes an issue you'll have learnt what you need to to respond appropriately)

</comment><comment><USER7> I think the best approach is to build something practical like a web app. Granted, things may still feel like magic when you're done with the tutorials, but the mist slowly clears the more you practice and every other day you'll be having "AHA!" moments. From what you've mention it does sound like JavaScript is what you're looking for. You probably don't need to learn an entire framework like AngularJS if you don't care about writing entire apps and only care about adding 'flourishes' to your designs. However, I need to agree @lmm, when starting out it really is the superficial things that matter. Personally I found JavaScript to be a bit tedious at first. Not to mention some hidden surprises you may run into (i.e. how scopes bubble, etc.) - so if your intention is to write full apps, I don't know if JS should be your first choice (but it should definitely be your second!).

In the case where you want to learn all aspects of building web-apps (and don't come from a computer science background), I would have to suggest you start out buy learning a framework like Ruby on Rails or Django (haven't tried flask, so can't tell). The reason I'd suggest one of these MVC frameworks is that you will learn a lot about the REST architecture (REST is the fundamentals of the modern web, you will probably be consuming REST services with JS frameworks). At least with rails it taught me the fundamentals, without even realising it. After figuring out how rails handled resources looking at APIs etc, all made sense. So for this reason I'd recommend people who don't have a CS background to learn from one of these frameworks - <USER3> really helped me fill in a lot of missing pieces when it comes to developing for the web. As for the language, I've tried both Ruby and Python, and found Ruby to be a bit more fun to write. It made programming seem like solving a puzzle rather than figuring out obscure syntax (which was the case for more 'hard core' languages like C++). Not to mention the fact that it seems to be the language of least surprises - more often than not, it does exactly what you expect it to do.

Sorry if I went on a bit of a tangent. Wrote this in a hurry. Hope it helps.

</comment><comment><USER10> The easiest language to learn is whichever has the best tools available to you to learn with.

If you're someone who can just read a book and go from there, try a few books and go with whatever one you like most. If you prefer learning by being taught, find courses need you and learn the language that they teach. If you want to learn online, go to Coursera or Treehouse and pick an option. And so on.

Don't choose an "easy" language and then struggle with the learning material - pick good learning materials first, learn how to write some simple code, and then use that knowledge to learn a more appropriate language for what you have in mind.

<comment><USER5> this - I remembered when I tried learning Ruby on a Windows machine. Spent hours just trying to get everything compatible.

php on the other hand was easy to learn in notepad and run on my domain sitting on linux.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would actually consider only Ruby and Python.

Javascript in my opinion will take longer to get up and running because the language syntax and frameworks are not as straightforward to grasp for a complete beginner.

Ruby and Python have awesome books for beginners and intermediate. I recommend Think Python by Allen Downey and Learn to Program by Chris Pine for beginners. Both are interesting, relatively small, and give you a taste of the language, and both are free.

Both Ruby and Python have frameworks (Rails and Django) that are used by many, many people making it easy to ask around if you have any questions.

</comment><comment><USER12> I was a bit of a polyglot in my earlier days..

C, C++, C#, Java, Python, Ruby + a ton of stuff at uni

I now mostly stick to Python. I'd say its the easiest to learn and the most fun to program in. (never thought I'd become a fanboy)

If you want to check it out, I'm writing a tutorial at [http://www.teachmepython.com](http://www.teachmepython.com)

You'll (hopefully) see that you can get moving real fast with Python. ;)

</comment><comment><USER13> You might be approaching this from the wrong direction. Maybe you dont need a programming language at all, but rather some user interface sketching tool?

If you want to learn programming itself, there are very few shortcuts as you will have problems along the way if you dont have the basics down. Pick a language and dive in. I will probably take less time than you think.

</comment><comment><USER14> I would strongly suggest you reconsider Python and Ruby. Both of those languages are very easy to read and understand -- two very important characteristics for someone just beginning development of their own project. Once you're comfortable with one of those languages, then maybe venture out into other languages. I saw someone else mention PHP -- if you go that route, do learn best practices (e.g., namespacing, sticking to paradigms, etc.). There's a lot of really bad PHP out there, and you can either add to that mess, or be a leader in demonstrating good practices.

Might I also suggest that you spend a few days with a few different languages; if one feels right, then go with that one. You can't get a good feel for the language without using it a bit. Best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER15> How to build an app in a day :

[http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/699085/Some-simple- tools...](http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/699085/Some-simple-tools-for- rapid-mobile-development)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This depends entirely on what you are making. If it is heavily datadriven and you are only prototyping an ORM will help you immensely especially if it creates your database structures for you, for this I reccomend Django (Python). If you are not beholden to a heavily datadriven system you can go with Flask (Python). If you however do not even need a backend to talk to, lets say you do not need data consistency or storage at all, you can get away with an entirely client side javascript solution and later plug in a backend. JQuery is awesome, I use it every day and it makes life a lot easier.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, didn't know about Flask I'll check it out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Python is nice in that it is a powerful language with advanced features but you don't need to use / understand those features to get started. So while you may view it as "large" language, you can get started without understanding these things.

If you contrast this with Java, Java is a smaller language, but forces you to use object orientation, so you generally have to have a better understanding of abstract concepts from the beginning.

Anyway, that's two of the languages I know reasonably well. Out of those two I would go for Python.

</comment><comment><USER18> > My goal is to build a small but real feeling version of my idea to > understand and test if there's actually value.

If you are already familiar with Jquery, just make a wireframe of page writes in Javascript that show your concept.

You might even learn something while you're at it.

Once you have the concept mapped, demonstrated, and maybe shown to a potential customer, you can consider learning a more complex javascript framework that might use real data,.

</comment><comment> workhere-io This tutorial is very suitable for beginners: [http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/](http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/)

</comment><comment><USER19> JavaScript frameworks are not easy to learn.

Just to add to what the other folks have said, if you are looking to rapidly prototype something with a backend, perhaps using Rails with all its gems will allow you to do so. You will have to eventually learn Ruby and Rails itself though, but I am sure there are a ton of "putting it together" tutorials out there.

Just plug in the multiple pieces and you're good to go.

</comment><comment><USER20> Python was designed as an easy to learn language and it has a nice syntax. Its main drawback is in its 'dynamic typing' nature which means that you can make a mistake which can stay hidden for a long time (compared to a compilation error), which is quite annoying. Sorry but I don't know a language which has the same qualities as Python (easy to read, lots of library) but is statically typed..

<comment><USER21> There's Cython, superset of Python with types. Not something one should start with, too obscure unfortunately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Out of the ones you listed, Haskell would be the most difficult for sure. For quick prototyping though, like others mentioned, the tools around the language would make a bigger impact than the language itself. So RoR or Django would make a lot of sense. You might also wanna take a look at Meteor (Javascript) for quick prototyping

</comment><comment><USER23> It depends on a domain you are interested in. For visuals it's probably Processing. For server side web it's PHP. For console utilities it's Python. And so on. JS is widely used but it's the worst programming languages in existence.

</comment><comment><USER24> Nothing ever beats GWBasic.

</comment><comment><USER25> C</comment>


Redis performance triage handbook - <AUTHOR> https://aadrake.com/posts/2017-05-15-redis-performance-triage-handbook.html <comment><AUTHOR> Hi All! I wrote down a few things on improving Redis performance based on some of the things I've seen helping companies. Submitted to proggit as well, but HN often provides better tech feedback.

What can be improved? What did I miss (excluding persistence)? I hope this is helpful for other companies/users of Redis, so add your thoughts!</comment>


Ask HN: offline billboard ads for online sites? - <AUTHOR>

Results? <comment><USER2> I have, during the F1 on water we had a huge float:

<http://ww.com/float.jpg>

The effect was pretty strange, we got a lot of press inquiries out of it, but hardly any users.

So it was good for something I guess.

Regular roadside billboards I've never had, but yesterday I saw an enormous one advertising Google Chrome.</comment>


Workplace Conflict: How to Diffuse Battles with Co-Workers - <AUTHOR> http://www.cio.com/article/print/688365

<comment><USER2> Shouldn't one _defuse_ conflicts instead of diffusing them?</comment>


All-American Streetcar Boom Fuels Urban Future - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2011/02/12/133682892/all-american-streetcar-boom-fuels-an-urban-future

<comment><USER2> The problem is that it isn't a craze. Very few PEOPLE are clamoring for them. Unless by people you mean a handful of city and state officials who think it's an awesome way to spend millions of dollars of money they don't really have on smiley vanity projects.</comment>


How NSA and GCHQ are tapping internet cables - <AUTHOR> http://electrospaces.blogspot.com/2014/11/incenser-or-how-nsa-and-gchq-are.html <comment><USER2> Isn't it interesting that governments can get their act together and come up with big distributed systems crunching tens of Gbps in real time but still continue to implode spectacularly when it comes to large-scale webapps (e.g. Obamacare, UK NHS systems, UK taxation systems.)

<comment><USER3> > when it comes to large-scale webapps (e.g. Obamacare, UK NHS systems, UK > taxation systems.)

There's absolutely no reason to believe the spy tech isn't as poorly implemented and terrible value for money as the examples you mention. Given their secretive nature it's even more likely to be the case I'd suspect.

<comment><USER4> This is my thinking as well. A lot of what spy tech is, is the ability to throw a warrant or NS letter into someone's face and force them to open the gate. The mythical uber-competent security services seem to be a pretty questionable premise. The few criminals caught via these tools are almost always the low hanging fruit of unconnected crazies, who seem to be harmless cranks and not real terrorists. Five eyes didn't stop or predict Snowden, Assange/Manning, Boston bombers, the rise of ISIS, Putin's advance on Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, the massive cyberwar Russia and China have declared on us, etc. In fact, all these things were major surprises to these security services, at least from what we can tell.

There's a lot of federal tax money spent on what is cargo cult science and cargo cult intelligence. The NSA has the ability to buy a lot of PhD's but they are stuck with the same batch of incompetent and profiteer federal contractors the rest of the government is stuck with.

<comment><USER5> That's because these systems were not designed for, or used very often for, antiterrorism purposes.

These capabilities are every bit about decision advantages and sabotage on international and geopolitical levels.

* Brazilian competitor PETROBRAS hacked by NSA on behalf of US oil companies.

* German elite, including Merkle, spied on during the Eurozone crisis.

* Iranian nuclear efforts sabotaged for several years by Stuxnet, and then by other cyber weapons.

* Syrian Air Force hacked and grounded during ISIS and civil war activity.

* "FISA" & FISA courts = Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "First, the data stream is filtered through what is known as MVR (Massive Volume Reduction), which immediately rejects high-volume, low-value traffic, such as peer-to-peer downloads. This reduces the volume by about 30%."

So all ye folks can start disguising your packets as BitTorrent porn downloads now :)

<comment><USER7> A Truecrypt container shared by Bittorrent would be a bad idea.

<comment><USER8> Why specifically? I always considered this a relatively safe way to transmit encrypted data. Assuming you have secure key exchange worked out, which is always the harder part anyway.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure if this is what the OP meant, but this[1] is what I think of when I hear anyone mention "Truecrypt".

1\. [http://motherboard.vice.com/read/nsa-paranoia-has-fanned- the...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/nsa-paranoia-has-fanned-the-flames- of-truecrypt-conspiracy-theories)

<comment><USER8> Ah, I guess I should have qualified my statement with "assuming the underlying crypto of truecrypt is secure, does sharing the ciphertext via bittorrent introduce any further side channel attacks outside of compromising the key exchange?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's not apparent from the post or a skim of the linked article, but "via Schneier" is apparently because Schneier links the article here:

[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/12/putting_nsagc...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/12/putting_nsagchq.html)

<comment><USER11> He obviously missed this guy sneaking in the side:

[https://goo.gl/maps/CsUJE](https://goo.gl/maps/CsUJE)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> FLAG 1 Terminus station on Google maps - [https://goo.gl/maps/2kM89](https://goo.gl/maps/2kM89). Note the black clad security guard standing watch.

<comment><USER13> Well, you'd expect that from any such facility whether it's involved in spying or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It must suck being the people assigned to damage control on these continual document releases.

I wonder if NSA and GHCQ are changing program code names as they become compromised, or if at some point they just changed all code names regardless. I suspect the latter. If that is the case, I imagine it was probably a bureaucratic nightmare of biblical proportions.</comment>


Ask HN: Is Posting Startup Job Offering (not a YC) Legit? - <AUTHOR>

We are hiring and I wonder if that would be okay to post over here the job description. <comment><USER2> There is a monthly who is hiring topic and most people tend to wait for that and as I'm not a moderator, I wouldn't take my word for it, but I would assume that it would be frowned upon.

The reason jobs are segregated is because it would make for boring reading if all recruiters started posting their job listings on here and it would become hellban-on-site very quickly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks,

I'll wait for March's thread then.

<comment><USER3> Here's the Whos's Hiring page for February 2013. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5150834>

And here's for January 2013. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4992617>

Who's Hiring is posted automatically monthly. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It would be great if you would post it on www.startrigger.com as well.

You get access to a pool of students who are all top 15%. The students are from mostly top 30 universities ranging from Harvard to Oxford.

Its free!

</comment><comment><USER5> You can have the job posting appear on codejobs[1] for free. Just send it to email@example.com

[1]<http://orangethirty.github.com/codejobs></comment>


Q&A With BostonGlobe.com Design & Dev Firms - <AUTHOR> http://bostinnovation.com/2011/09/14/qa-with-bostonglobe-coms-designdev-firms-upstatement-filament-group/

<comment><USER2> "For instance, the site has Apple Newton compatibility."

Haha

<comment><USER3> it's still easier than ie6 compatibility...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> +1 for this one: <cite>The process of designing a responsive site is a lot different than what we might be used to. It really needs the iterative approach and live prototypes to work with. I think this type of design puts a definitive end to the "should designers know how to code?" debate. If you don't know how it works at its core, there's no way you can make something good.</cite></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a "magic bullet" to test claims of Verizon/Comcast throttling? - <AUTHOR>

There's been a lot of discussion about Verizon and Comcast throttling services like Netflix and Youtube. When someone claims that they found evidence, there are often comments saying that the method is flawed. If all these claims are not conclusive, what would be the "magic bullet" test? Could we do it by collectively sharing certain network results? Would testing the bit rate with VPN on/off help test these claims? <comment><USER2> At one point, Google used to have a page speed test - it was here:

[http://www.google.com/get/videoqualityreport/](http://www.google.com/get/videoqualityreport/)

Now, that "page" is just a commercial/education as far as I can tell. The "Your results" part, for me at least, is grayed out and says "Your results are not available" when I mouse over.

Interestingly enough, they have a bunch of gobbledegook at the bottom of this page about being a "HD Verified ISP" -

[http://www.google.com/get/videoqualityreport/#methodology](http://www.google.com/get/videoqualityreport/#methodology)

No actual data though, at least I don't see it. It claims to have "ratings" but I see nothing but text.

</comment><comment><USER3> Other than some kind of leak there's essentially no way to have proof. But bandwidth tests from many customers _across many AS paths_ could expose where the problems lie, and if they all lie in one particular place then we could break out the pitchforks.

Here's an example of uncovering the "everybody pays Comcast but Comcast pays no one" business model: [http://www.internap.com/2010/12/02/peering-disputes- comcast-...](http://www.internap.com/2010/12/02/peering-disputes-comcast- level-3-and-you/) It appears that Verizon has now adopted the same tactic of creating selective congestion through deliberate non-upgrading.</comment>