Moving a Production MySQL Database to Amazon RDS with Minimal Downtime - <AUTHOR> http://geehwan.posterous.com/moving-a-production-mysql-database-to-amazon

<comment><USER2> Having done this a few times with mysql-to-mysql moves across datacenters theres a couple things I would like to mention.

I dont know what Amazon RDS is like replaying binary logs but in mysql 5.0 I faced a bug where temporary table creation statements were being ignored. This was a huge problem from us and at the time could not find a work around. Here is the related mysql bug <http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=35583>

While this move has successfully worked for the author I hope if you ever do a database move you'll do a test run first. I've experience numerous bugs in mysql replication and replaying binary logs due to temporary tables, duplicate keys due to different auto insert ids and procs/trigs/funcs causing some havoc.

</comment><comment><USER3> I posted a comment on the blog, but will leave one here as well.

In regards to the claim of: "quick instance size scaling with no downtime"

I am currently evaluating moving our MySQL server to Amazon's RDS. I liked the sounds of the Multi-AZ RDS as it will greatly decrease downtime. However upon examination I found the following issues:

\- Changing an instance size results in downtime. Amazon's docs and support say up to 3 minutes.

\- Any failover can take up to 3 minutes to promote the backup to becoming live.

\- You will experience downtime during that time

\- Browsing the support forum, some people complained of it taking more than 3 minutes to failover and in some cases the failover got stuck and they experience a longer downtime until they wrote on the forum and had AWS support manually fix it.

So in other words, this is not a silver bullet to making MySQL have 100% uptime. And in fact you will experience "up to 3 minutes" of downtime each week during the maintenance window when a failover will occur (unless they do the failover before the maintenance, which I have not found information on anywhere).

<comment><USER4> The weekly maintenance window you define for Amazon RDS is just a place holder.It does not mean that maintenance happens every week. It only happens when there are specific security or MyQL patches that need to be applied and is pre-announced in the forums.The maintenance window could also be used to schedule instance scaling events, during which, like you pointed out, there would be downtime. However, the downtime would be limited to the instance fail over time (typically less than 3 minutes) if you use a Multi-AZ deployment.

<comment><USER3> Are you aware if they do the failover, then after it is successful perform maintenance? Or do they take the just stop the master server to do maintenance and let failover happen automatically?

The first method would eliminate downtime. The second method would have that up to 3 minute downtime.

Also, in my basic testing, I only had 1 out of 10 failovers be completed within 15 seconds. The rest took between 2 and 3 minutes. The longest one was slightly over 3 minutes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been planning my move of a 25gb MySQL db over to RDS.

I decided to have a downtime window in the middle of the night, versus doing a live move. I am moving from a dedicated datacenter to AWS all at once, so I'm in a different situation than those moving from an EC2 mysql instance to RDS, which should be a lot easier.

I followed the instructions from the RDS instructions, which tell you to break up mysqldump files great than 1GB and use mysqlimport to send them over.

I did some benchmarking and found the import time wasn't linear on file size. This may have to do with the fact that I was using the 1.7GB instance (which i'm upgrading to 15gb for the live site).

<comment><USER6> We had to do this a few times with large databases. To save some time we recreated the table structure we had (use something like Navicat to make life really easy and copy over the structure). We then exported our DBs into CSV files and used mysqlimport with --compress flag. Took about 4 - 6 hours to get all the data up. Definitely a weekend or latenight job. Of course with significantly less data this could take much less time. Our smaller DBs took less than an hour and those we literally just used the copy functions within Navicat.

<comment><USER6> forgot to add, to minimiza downtime we perform this dump and import during a slow period. If you're using PKs just note where your dumped tables leave off. When ready to roll to prod just put up your maintenance page, export from production your dbs into csv files again, but now from the PKs upward (this saves considerable time, you could always do the whole db again but wouldn't recommend it), import (add) the missing data and voila - a migrated DB. Switch over your DNS or domain settings (however you handle this) and you're up and running on RDS. Hope this helps anyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> ChronicDB could help here <http://chronicdb.com></comment>


Apple's New Pinch-To-Zoom Monopoly is Bad News - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/08/25/apple_v_samsung_verdict_creates_new_pinch_to_zoon_monopoly_that_s_bad_for_consumers.html <comment><USER2> To me the real bad news is that I'm scared shitless to develop and commercialize anything now.

No invention is truely innovative, not a single product on the market today is truely original. We're all influenced by the same factors and we're all trying to push the same limits in technology.

I don't have nearly the means to go to court against a company like Apple (or any company at all for that matter). If I launch my product today, I would be afraid of being successful, because I know I'll be bullied by others.

And when patent lawsuits can win you a Billion dollars, patent bullies are happy and waiting for me.

But yeah, I agree patents are a driving force behind innovation...

<comment><USER3> "I would be afraid of being successful, because I know I'll be bullied by others."

Getting sued for patent infringement is one of those first-world problems I'd love to have, because it means you're big & threatening enough to be worth suing.

Your strategy there, if you're still a startup and don't have a huge legal team, is to get bought by a big company with a huge legal team that would be hurt if the aggressor wins in court. See: Google, YouTube, and the Viacom lawsuit.

<comment><USER4> Great problem except there goes your leverage for the negotiation

Also shows the effect of patents on the market, the little guys either get bought for cheap or destroyed as soon as they have any sort of success

<comment><USER3> The point is that the lawsuit _is_ your leverage for the negotiation. The acquirer doesn't want to see you lose the lawsuit any more than you want to lose it, because it would set a precedent that would make their own products infringing. And since they're bigger than you, they have more to lose, and hence more of an incentive to win.

I've long suspected that Google bought YouTube _for_ the lawsuit. If Viacom had won, it would set a legal precedent that would basically make Google's business model illegal. And Viacom would likely have won, suing a tiny 14-person startup. So Google's only option was to buy the lawsuit (and the company along with it), so they could use their own legal defense team to win in court.

<comment><USER5> I think you're out on a limb a bit with this one. For most people and companies a lawsuit would most likely be considered a liability. Granted that there are exceptions like the YouTube example you propose, but you can't assume the same for every little startup that gets sued.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The analogy with cars is misleading. Patents (unlike copyright) offer protection for a fairly limited duration. The steering wheel and other standard controls would long since have been unprotected.

Likewise, our children will be free to incorporate pinch to zoom in a few years...if of course patent protection doesn't lead to innovating a prefered alternative.

On the one hand I think IP laws have significant problems, but on the other, Android's interface shows little evidence of a meaningful effort at innovation and even less effort to respect the IP of others in the industry.

<comment><USER7> The timespan is utterly ridiculous though. With the modern pace of innovation in mobile and software development, a 20-year patent term would be like if the steering wheel patent were valid for 200 years.

<comment><USER6> To push the analogy further...

In the first 30 years of the automobile, tiller, steering wheel, or pedals were largely irrelevant. Until the proliferation of better roads, none of that mattered. Likewise, what is holding back mobile computing is bandwidth infrastructure and device power efficiency, not interface design features.

If you think that the pace of change is so radically different, consider that in the twenty years following patent 37435 the world got aircraft, motion pictures and Einstein's _Annus Mirabilis._

The iPhone of Automobiles: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benz_Patent_Motorwagen>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Google should distribute two Android versions - one for the U.S. (with features like pinch-to-zoom removed) and one for the rest of the world. This would hopefully create some pressure to change the obsolete patent system.

<comment><USER9> I think that's the wrong approach. They should continue to distribute one Android version, and that version should retain pinch-to-zoom, while they fight the absurdity in court.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Question about patents - is the act of pinch-to-zoom patented or the _implementation_ (the algorithms, type of hardware needed etc.) patented?

If it is the act that is patented, then as others have mentioned, its not necessarily original. If the implementation is patented, could there be alternative implementations? Did Samsung even actually copy Apple's implementation(at an algorithm level)?

<comment><USER11> It's both the first and second, and neither at the same time. It's Schrödinger's Pinch.

... Making this comment pains me slightly. It's a comment I wouldn't have made on HN a year ago, pithy (I think) and slightly humorous, but I'm not bringing specific domain knowledge into the discussion to answer a question.

It's the sort of comment I would have refrained from making on reddit many years ago when I first visited, when I encountered great commentary from knowledgeable participants on the topic at had, and lurked.

<comment><USER12> Then why are you doing it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Compare this with the culture prevalent in web development.

People sharing every improvement or advance by blogging about it, open- sourcing code, writing tutorials etc.

<comment><USER14> Although the age of open web dev may be passing.

I worry about the future of web development when I see things that used to be shared openly (logging technology, databases, languages, search indexing tools, etc) one-by-one become startups with a price tag.

Only this morning did I see the job advert for Swiftype: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4442562>

By default I wish startups success, but I fear for the long-term implications when each piece of the puzzle (of web development) migrates towards being a business that needs to make money. And that is before you factor in patents and proprietary knowledge and how companies tend to act aggressively when their financial back is up against the wall.

Web dev will only stay open so long as web devs fight to keep it that way.

<comment><USER15> >> I worry about the future of web development when I see things that used to be shared openly... one-by-one become startups with a price tag

I'm not worried. I develop for the web, and nearly every piece of my tech stack - language, editor, database, server, browser rendering engine - is open source. My skills are in such high demand that my team can't find people to join it. I feel zero pressure to use anything closed-source.

>> Web dev will only stay open so long as web devs fight to keep it that way.

I do agree with this. I think it's unwise to develop for platforms like iOS, however popular they may be. It's a form of sharecropping.

Let's keep working on the web, where every computer and mobile device is on equal footing, and we don't have to rewrite our app to reach new customers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is what I've been thinking from the moment Apple started going after Android manufacturers with patents like these, and it's why the patent system is _so very flawed_ , because it doesn't account for how competition actually works in a market.

Let's say you have one company "create" a new product category - a new type of product. So they are the first ones doing that, but this is usually done through some combination and improvement of old things.

But then you _have to_ get other companies to do the _same_ or _very similar_ , because that's how competition works, and that's _exactly_ what competition is. Making 90% of the same product - so to be in the _same_ product category - but having that 10% as a competitive advantage over the others in that specific market.

Competition is not overhauling the product 90%. That's just not how it works, and you don't have to take my word for it. Just look around you at any product category you want. They are all 90% similar and 10% different, not just in how they look, but how they function. The only major "overhaul" happens once a decade or so when that specific market gets disrupted, but then that new market is populated by competitors doing the same, too, and the cycle repeats itself.

If you wouldn't have that, you'd have exactly what the article is saying - random "innovations" just for the sake of being different so you don't get sued, less competition from the point of view of the users, because the vast majority of them will prefer a certain way of doing things, and since only one company can own that, it means monopolies will be much easier to form - and it will also be much harder for new entrants.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think pinch to zoom is pretty innovative and someone should get credit for coming up with that idea. Without it, I bet we'd see the classic magnifying glass in the bottom corner of every screen to zoom.

Simple does not mean obvious. UX designers need to protect their work and creativity.

<comment><USER18> I'm waiting for the producers of Minority Report (2002) to start suing everyone since that movie clearly demonstrated swipe, pinch-to-zoom and other "innovative" UI elements. </sarcasm>

Nothing is ever truly innovative. Nearly everything, quite literally everything, is built on something else.

Apple, at its core, is actually the BEST IN THE WORLD at not innovating, but perfecting someone else's design. And that is my problem with this whole farce. Apple isn't an innovative company, at all. Apple is, however, excellent at seeing what others are doing and out doing them at their own game. They don't 'invent', they never have. They tweak, they massage and they simplify (some could argue that this is innovative, but I'm going to use the term like it is being used in court...is they are actually inventing a concept that didn't exist before).

<comment><USER19> You know, I was just thinking the same thing about Minority Report. How does that not serve as prior art? I'm sure there are plenty of others before this as well.

Someone commented on that blog about the TED talk that did a demo on "the pinch": [http://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_han_demos_his_breakthrough_tou...](http://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_han_demos_his_breakthrough_touchscreen.html)

<comment><USER20> Uhh, because fictional representations of devices without sufficient information on how to actually construct them isn't prior art?

I guarantee you, if you invent a matter/energy transporter you will be able to patent it despite _Star Trek_ having put it on screen almost 50 years ago.

<comment><USER19> Did you see the video I linked to? This was actually real and that video is dated 1 year before the iPhone was even announced, let alone released.

Besides, as far as I've read (and I haven't read the details of the patents themselves) they are patenting the concept of the pinch-to-zoom, not the actual implementation, otherwise Samsung would just have a slightly different technical implementation of it right...

<comment><USER20> You can't get utility patents for "concepts". They patented a specific way to do pinch-to-zoom _on mobile devices with capacitive touch screens_ (and interacting with an event loop). Which is a similar, but not identical, problem to doing multitouch pinch-to-zoom on a projector-based system as in the demo.

<comment><USER19> Which is as silly as those patents which essentially took existing ideas and added "on the web" to the end of them. Not saying you're wrong, just what everyone else has been screaming - the patent system is broken!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think Android should implement a clock-wise single finger "circle around an object" to zoom and counter-clock-wise to unzoom. Just like the "undo" option in Paper. That's pretty cool.

<comment><USER22> Strangely when someone asked how else zooming could be done the first thing I thought of was a circle clockwise and anti clockwise.

<comment><USER23> Follow to the logical conclusion. Did you think of it quickly? Then someone patented it. You know, so you don't go and "steal" their "innovation".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Personally I think pinch-to-zoom doesn't work very well anyway. It always seems to zoom in too quickly or too slowly; the amount of zoom seems arbitrary.

What I've always wanted was to be able to put two fingers to mark the top left and bottom right of a bounding box which would mark how much to zoom in and hold for, say, half a second. To zoom out use two fingers to mark the top right and bottom left of the bounding box you want the current screen to zoom out to (again hold for half a second). This would be much more accurate. The time delay is to allow for mis-taps and to give the user time to get the bounding box the right size.

A variation would be similar but would be something like:

\- hold two fingers on the screen until you get a bounding box like above.

\- move the bounding box to the correct size.

\- let go and the zoom happens.

With this method you could cancel the zoom action by collapsing the bounding box on itself vertically or horizontally.

<comment><USER25> Interesting, how would you differentiate between zooming in and zooming out though?

<comment><USER24> Zooming in is with fingers at top left and bottom right, zooming out is with fingers at top right and bottom left.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> So far this only applies to the USA, right? Will companies ship their products with pinch-to-zoom to the rest of the world?

</comment><comment><USER27> I think it's instructive to look away from the world of operating systems, which have been under legal threat since the 80's and thus have always been under an anti-competitive, anti-innovative shadow. The fact that so few companies tried what Apple did with UI speaks as much to the intimidation inherent in the industry than to Steve Job's genius.

Whenever I ask myself if patents are necessary to promote innovation, I think of music software, where copying is a fact of life yet highly original ideas emerge year after year. Whenever something useful emerges (like Ableton Live's once innovative "session view" where you launch repeating music clips) it's usually copied by half the industry within a few versions and nobody even blinks.

In the mean time, the biggest incumbents (Avid's Pro Tools, Steinberg's Cubase) have remained seemingly profitable businesses, and consumers have benefited from abundant choice. The competition has also encouraged the software makers to add a lot of value in the form of lots of included content (soft synths, effects, loops, etc.). And funny enough, the more innovative companies (Ableton, Propellerhead, Cycling 74 spring to mind) keep coming up with interesting ideas.

</comment><comment><USER28> "We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas..." - Steve Jobs <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU>

"I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I'm going to destroy Android because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this." - Steve Jobs

</comment><comment><USER29> IP laws have to do an impossible task.

They need to separate innovation into two piles based on whether an innovation would have/could have happened without that party and (though this seems to be easy to forget).

That's what these laws are supposed to be doing. The problem is that this is a job that legal systems (laws, lawmaker, courts, etc) are not well suited for. Even if you leave aside problems like big patentholders in existing industries & companies out-lobbying potential future beneficiaries of reduced patent protection (future businesses & consumers) it would be hard to make laws that woud do this job effectively. Laws that will do the job effectively for generations are virtually impossible.

I think that Apple _did_ do something with iphones that may not have happened without them. That said, I don't think that any of these specific patents capture that.

<comment><USER30> RE: _it would be hard to make laws that woud do this job effectively_

\- Playing devil's advocate, doesn't law ultimately assign this task to humans? ie, the patent office? And reviewers?

\- Clearly, the reviewers are outgunned. Both intellectually, and tactically. For example, the trend of making overly broad claims. This can effectively mask the prior art. It makes a "needle in a haystack" problem for the reviewer. By generalizing the case, when the prior art is specific examples.

<comment><USER29> I think the task has to be shared which is how it is set up to work. Patent office employees & judges are people.

But, laws don't just lay out their goal and let people get to work. They break it down into much smaller judgments. Things like novelty, non-obviousness, subject matter & applicability.

"Would have probably been invented regardless of patent law" is to vague to be a law and too difficult to ask bureaucrats to ascertain.

<comment><USER30> Ideas of "principle" vs "rules" based decisionmaking have a long history of debate. As you note, writing perfect rules to cover all scenarios ex-ante is nearly impossible.

That leaves us the task to debate virtue of new and existing principles, and find a way to incorporate discretion and expertise. The issue is making sure that discretion doe not get manipulated/gamed as well.

How do we do that?

Society today is very much every man/special interest for himself.

<comment><USER29> It could also be that the system of laws, lawmakers, courts & bureaucrats is just not very good at this sort of thing. Imagine that for some reason we needed this system to make decisions based on niceness or sexiness.

<comment><USER30> "Obviousness" is in the eyes of the beholder

The irony of bureaucrats judging (lack of) inventiveness

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Question: Can I start a small dev company in some other country thereby bypassing any patent trolls? Perhaps somewhere like Sweeden where they are much more sane about these issues?

If this is the case, all we are ending up doing is driving technology away from the USA, and continuing to kill our economy.

<comment><USER32> If the company does any business with people in the US, patent trolls can attack it - perhaps the most famous recent example being the Uniloc vs. Mojang case: <http://notch.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/mojang.pdf>

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Patents are important protections designed to protect the hard work of individuals from the onslaught of more powerful forces... I've got one myself (a utility patent)

THIS IS NOT THE CASE HERE!

This is more akin to privatizing the alphabet...

Not exactly a great way to stimulate civilization's advance.

</comment><comment><USER34> (This comes from an S2 user with Pinch-To-Zoom.)

First, Pinch-To-Zoom is the best idea anyone has come up with yet, but it certainly won't be the last.

If anything, this decision forces Google/Samsung etc. to innovate a better solution. If you don't think one exists, I think you are sorely mistaken. Pinch-To-Zoom needs to be used by 2 hands (one to pinch, one to hold the phone) which inherently is annoying.

If the patents are trivial, obvious, etc. other companies will find workarounds and some of those workarounds will be better than what is currently available.

In 12 months, this lawsuit will be meaningless because technology will keep advancing forward.

</comment><comment><USER35> Samsung can:

1\. Negotiate a license with Apple to use patented gestures. => Reduces profit margins on Samsung phones. Bad news.

2\. Invent/use other gestures. => Forces users to learn new gestures. Should be fine.

3\. Challenge the patent system claiming User Interface patents should not be. => Re-initiates the debate on the use of patents to protect inventions/stop innovation, in particular when it comes to UIs. The real question.

Let's refocus. This question requires a deeper analysis than a simple analogy with car manufacturers, but fortunately does not require hackers to turn IP experts.

</comment><comment><USER36> Please stop blaming Apple and start blaming the patent system itself. Samsung would have done the exact same thing if they had those patents or came out with iPhone first.

<comment><USER37> And you know this for a fact how?

<comment><USER36> Because almost all companies (and people) inherently behave in a way that is in their own best interests. Owning critical smartphone patents is clearly in the interest of people in the smartphone business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Any reason/proof Pinch-To-Zoom (and the other Apple patents in the Samsung case) will not be licensed under FRAND ?

<comment><USER39> FRAND only applies as a legal principle of the patent in question is part of an industry standard. So a Samsung patent that got incorporated into the UMTS should become a FRAND patent. The rules do vary from standards body to standards body.

Google has argued that industry-common patents, not just industry-standard patents, should fall under FRAND terms as well. In other words a patent that enables multitouch gestures is so essential to modern smartphones that you can't compete without it.

I'm still ambivalent on the whole patent question, though I'm intrigued by the idea of making _all_ patents licensable under FRAND terms.

<comment><USER40> FRAND terms in this case can only be "reasonable" and "nondiscriminatory" if they also account for copyleft, ceative commons, and open source implementations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Another article that doesn't get patents right.

"Apple did first in iOS now _only_ iOS can use them"

No, everyone can use, as long as they pay Apple whatever they ask for the royalties, or get sued by ridiculously sums of money.

The monopoly is not on the invention - the monopoly is on the legal right to ask _any_ value from, or sue, whoever implements similar idea.

 _That_ is what's f __* up about patents, because otherwise, it would be a great idea since you can build upon other's inventions and the inventor still gets financial return for R &D.

</comment><comment><USER42> I can imagine what he is saying. In a Cherokee 180 4 person airplane you do steer on the ground with your feet and control the throttle with your hand. In a Gulfstar 50 you steer on the ground with a dial for your left hand placed off on the left. You need training to use each machine. The world has not come to a screeching halt just because not all airplanes have the same controls.

<comment><USER43> But what is your point? Is a majority of the world population going to fly one of those airplanes as part of their daily routine soon?

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> What I don't understand, is how Apple market these gestures as being very "human". If they are so natural, how can they be patented?

<comment><USER45> Because the method of translating the gesture into digital signals is ingenious - like how the Kinnect and Wii capture natural gestures and movements (note how they were able to innovate round each others patents).

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Has anyone used Aldiko ebook reader on android? It uses the right edge of the mobile's screen to change its brightness. With your thumb, trace the right edge towards the top and brightness increases, down and it decreases. I wonder if something similar could be used for zooming. You don't need two fingers to zoom!

</comment><comment><USER47> I don't think we need anymore of these threads. It's getting repetitive. There are too many emotional individuals on all sides of the fence that are adding nothing of value to the debate. If you want to flame that's fine, go do it on Reddit or try the Ars Technia battlefront forum.

</comment><comment><USER48> US patent business is really sad. Looks patents are given without doing enough investigation. I remember turmeric and neem get patented by some university of US, where India is using these herb from ancient time. Is it really given to protect someone's innovation?

</comment><comment><USER49> Does this mean Metro apps need new guidelines? Here is the documentation for optical zooming in Metro: [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/apps/hh46530...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/apps/hh465307.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER50> It blew my mind when I learned about d-pad patents for video game consoles. Ever wonder why Playstation had to use that awkward combination of 4 arrow- like things pointing towards each other? Patents.

</comment><comment><USER51> Submarine patent <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_patent>

Well, I guess it's better than having to deal with that.

</comment><comment><USER52> I asked in another thread, but the first few versions of android didn't have these features, what changed?

</comment><comment><USER53> Not much worse than Amazon's Monopoly on 1 click ordering.

</comment><comment><USER54> Great artists steal... good artists get caught?

</comment><comment><USER55> All the cited apple patents on multitouch gestures appear to be filed since Jeff Han's TED talk - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKh1Rv0PlOQ> \- which clearly demonstrates many of the patented techniques. I find it really hard to understand how any of these patents were awarded.

[edit] Some of the quotes from his 2006 presentation are quite relevant to this...

... _"Now, multi-touch sensing isn't anything- isn't completely new, I mean, people like Bill Buxton have been playing around with it in the '80s."_ ...

... _"Now this is a photographer's light box application. Again, I can use both of my hands to kind of interact and move photos around. But, what's even cooler-_

 _(uses fingers to 'grab' two corners of one of the photos and 'pulls' it to full screen size)_

 _is that, if I have two fingers, I can actually grab a photo and then stretch it out like that really easily. I can pan, zoom, and rotate it effortlessly._

 _(slides piles of photos around)_

 _I can do that grossly with both of my hands,_

 _(pulls photo out of stack & enlarges it)_

 _or if I can do it just with two fingers on each of my hands together._

 _(grabs empty space around photos & zooms in and out of canvas)_

 _If I grab the canvas I can kind of do the same thing- stretch it out- I can do it simultaneously, where I'm holding this down-_

 _(holds pile of photos down while pulling out another)_

 _-and gripping on another one, stretching this out like this._

 _Again, the interface just disappears here. There's no manual. This is exactly what you kind of expect, especially if you haven't interacted with a computer before."_ ...

Which sort of begs the question that if an expert in the field thinks the gesture is exactly what you would expect, even if you had no expertise whatsoever, then how does that not qualify as obvious?

<comment><USER56> _"All the cited apple patents on multitouch gestures appear to be filed since Jeff Han's TED talk"_

FingerWorks, a pioneer in multitouch gestures, filed for (and received) boatloads of patents. Apple bought FingerWorks in 2005, inheriting its intellectual property. The scientists came to work for Apple and continued to file patents for the research that they had done since the nineties.

"In June 2005, FingerWorks officially announced they were no longer in business. The founders continued to file and process patents for their work through late 2007. And as of August 2008 they still filed patents for Apple, Inc." [1]

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FingerWorks>

<comment><USER55> Just had a look at their patents, and found this line in their gesture patent -

 _Identification and classification of intuitive hand configurations and motions_ \- [http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Se...](http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch- bool.html&r=9&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=Fingerworks.AS.&OS=AN/Fingerworks&RS=AN/Fingerworks)

How is the use of intuitive gestures not obvious, entirely by definition?

<comment><USER57> There is a big difference between dreaming about something and actually doing it. For example, everyone knew what a flying machine was, centuries before it was invented. Clearly this doesn't mean that creating that machine was actually obvious. With computing it is similar, there are lots of "inventions" dreamed about by science fiction writers that are simply not possible today. When such innovations become possible, they will need to be protected.

<comment><USER58> And yet the wright brothers were not granted a patent on "things that fly". They were granted patents on some specific machines they invented that could fly. But the patents were about the mechanical machines themselves. If someone else had come along and invented a totally different means of flying (like a helicopter) they would not have been infringing on their patents. This is a patent on "things that fly".

<comment><USER59> Apples patents are clearly not patents on "smartphones with a rectangular touchscreen and no external UI buttons", but they cover many inventions that make such a phone usable.

Likewise, apart from a totally different kind of flying machine like a helicopter, there probably isn't any better method of controlling an airplane than the method covered by Wrights patents (since it specifically does not exclude non-wing warping control designs), which is why the basic mode of control is still in use today. So Wrights patents at the time might as well be called a patents on "things that fly". It was very difficult to make a controllable plane without violating the patent.

Likewise, unless you equip a phone with dedicated zoom controls, there probably isn't a better or more intuitive way of zooming than using pinch-to- zoom or double tapping.

<comment><USER60> > Apples patents are clearly not patents on "smartphones with a rectangular > touchscreen and no external UI buttons", but they cover many inventions that > make such a phone usable.

Actually, per my understanding, Apple's _design_ patents are exactly that (if you throw in beveled corners). It's true, though, that those aren't the patents at issue in this thread.

<comment><USER59> Yes, but design patents are a different animal, and AFAIK much easier to work around. So if they changed just one aspect of the design (making it less likely to be confused), Apple would have a harder time enforcing it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto - <AUTHOR> https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/crypto-anarchy.html <comment><USER2> Worth adding the date to the title, it is 1992.

<comment><AUTHOR> Too late to edit it, very good point

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It may already be already here, slowly gaining ground.

Some companies only accept crypto. It is both a statement and practical.

</comment><comment><USER2> Anyone know the significance of "Higher Power: 2^756839"

<comment><USER4> I think think when this was written, that number-1 was the largest known mersenne prime (which are the prime numbers that can be written as 2^something - 1). Some more context on this particular prime here: [https://primes.utm.edu/notes/756839.html](https://primes.utm.edu/notes/756839.html)</comment></comment>


55.7% of Android owners "hate Apple" (and other smartphone stats) - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/smartphone-survey-results-2011-4

<comment><USER2> 55.7% of a statistically-unrepresentative group answered the question "What might make you buy the iPhone instead [of an Android handset]?" with "Nothing: I hate Apple". The other options given for that question were "A very cheap iPhone option", "An iPhone that works better with non-Apple apps and products" and "An iPhone that had better apps and typing". There was no "other" option in the survey.

The demographic captured by the survey were far more likely to own a smartphone than the general population and far more likely to own an Android handset over an iPhone. 16% of respondents came to the survey via an Android fan site, versus 3% who came from an iPhone fan site.

</comment><comment><USER3> The result is not surprising considering the survey was terribly biased towards Apple related answers and the only real option for Android users was "I Hate Apple".</comment>


The Last Question by Isaac Asimov – 1956 - <AUTHOR> http://multivax.com/last_question.html <comment><USER2> I always read this every time it is posted, and I always upvote it every time I see it.</comment>


Respiratory virus pathogens on frequently touched surfaces at airports - <AUTHOR> https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12879-018-3150-5 <comment><AUTHOR> TL;DR: Hand-carried luggage trays at the security check area are incredibly unhygienic.

Almost everyone touches them with their bare hands when going trough security check.

Children toys in airport playground, buttons of the payment terminal at the pharmacy or divider glass at a passport control point are no match.</comment>


Help Us Build a $300 House  - <AUTHOR> http://hbr.org/web/slideshows/help-us-build-a-300-dollar-house/1-slide?cm_mmc=social-_-facebook-_-032411

<comment><USER2> I've researched building spaces with conex containers. I've not actually pulled the trigger and done it, but a lot of other people have. It is fairly likely that I'll build a semi-mobile office into one before too long, but I'm not a mechanical/electrical hacker, alas. If anyone is and would like to explore this, please drop me a line.

<comment><USER3> You would be better off buying a used mobile home. Not only would you save money over converting a shipping container to a dwelling but you would have a far more habitable space.

<comment><USER2> The integrity of most mobile homes is subpar for my desired application. I do, among other things, IT consulting and computer forensics. We were working on a project to deploy to disaster zones to provide ISP services, data recovery, and other related services. Packing our entire operation into a container that could be shipped to the area via normal shipping options would reduce our deployment costs and logistical complexity.

(And, as always, anyone interested, please drop me a line.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> A tablet computer but no place to shit? Give me a fucking break - the iPad's magic won't cure dysentery.

I'll add that the whole ownership theme is in Marie-Antoinette-let-them-eat- cake territory because it ignores the most basic fact of urban poverty - people typically don't own the land beneath the slums and are occupying it illegally.

<comment><USER2> The link is currently invalid, but I distinctly recall an outdoor toilet in the diagram.

Why is land ownership relevant to the posting? If they're told to pick up and move, they can do so very easily. Or, a benevolent land owner (government, commercial, other) could offer them space at low or no cost, particularly if they're willing to live in something such as this, rather than a typical dwelling for the area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Check out: <http://www.undergroundhousing.com/>

He built a house for $50, albeit with many salvaged materials and in the '70s.</comment>


V8 is faster than GCC - <AUTHOR> http://wingolog.org/archives/2011/06/10/v8-is-faster-than-gcc

<comment><USER2> I can't even begin to explain how wrong this benchmark and the author's conclusion is. I'd rather see a benchmark of apache vs a fibonacci function than read this nonsense.

<comment><USER3> I just ran it, fib is roughly six times faster

<comment><USER4> recursive fib, memoized fib, or O(1) fib?

Also, given that apache should run indefinitely, I would think the preferred result would be that fib is infinitely faster.

<comment><USER5> There is no O(1) fib.

<comment><USER6> [http://mathworld.wolfram.com/BinetsFibonacciNumberFormula.ht...](http://mathworld.wolfram.com/BinetsFibonacciNumberFormula.html)

<comment><USER7> It contains n-th power. So it is O(logN).

<comment><USER8> In fact, since the fibonacci sequence grows as O(phi^n), we need O(n) digits to hold the n'th fibonacci number, so the fastest possible algorithm to compute the n'th fibonacci number must run in time Omega(n).

<comment> T-hawk Not necessarily if you can parallelize computing the digits. Your average Pentium processor can compute a floating-point number with a mantissa of 16 decimal or 52 binary digits in one clock cycle, not 16 or 52. It does so by using enough silicon to compute them all in parallel.

<comment><USER5> That's only a constant factor improvement. What if you want to calculate 104 binary digits?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a banal point. Yes, separate compilation hurts performance. But that's what link-time optimization is for. GCC and LLVM alike can both do link-time optimization.

You might as well say "gcc with -O0 is slower than V8, therefore V8 is faster than gcc".

<comment><USER10> Link-time optimization is almost never useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> How about trying a benchmark that mimics an actual program that someone would use.

</comment><comment><USER12> Obscure? It's interesting but I can't see a case where I'd be recompiling C code every time I want to run something. On the other hand, we can't just go AOT compile using V8 (AFAIK) so let's call V8 always slower?

<comment><USER13> > I can't see a case where I'd be recompiling C code every time I want to run > something.

How about when you're writing a program in C?

<comment><USER12> Fair enough, though I'm rarely obsessed with the absolute speed of code while developing. Tools like clang have brought this experience a long way as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In my mind, the value of this benchmark isn't to prove that V8 is absolutely faster than C but that there is intrinsic value in doing runtime compilation instead of / on top of compile-time optimizations.

It's a demonstration of _why_ run time optimizing compilers/runtimes may one day become faster than compile time optimizing compilers.

</comment><comment><USER15> Yay! Another useless benchmark!

</comment><comment><USER16> No kidding.

</comment><comment><USER17> What.

</comment><comment><USER18> Every reader of that blogpost: Oh blabla unfair, the C code of the thing would be faster if the thing had included the other thing blabla.

I think its a fun benchmark :)</comment>


A Tale of Security Gone Wrong - <AUTHOR> http://gavinmiller.io/2016/a-tale-of-security-gone-wrong/ <comment><USER2> Out of curiosity, what would be the problem with say rounding the entropy to one significant digit, and storing that? The main downside I can think of is that it would help attackers avoid wasting time on passwords that are difficult to crack, and focus on the easy ones instead. But then again, if the whole point of the feature is to avoid allowing easy passwords in the first place, could it be worth it?

<comment><USER3> The easy passwords (for today) were already filtered out. The idea was to future-proof it by recording how hard they were. Rounding to, say, whole numbers still leaks information, but a bit less. So now everything from [13.5,14.5) map to 14, that's still smaller than [0,+inf]. You could use some sort of hidden value mapping them to grades that aren't obviously mappings of entropy (like A, B, C, D). It indicates that there's _something_ about them, but without seeing a table mapping [10,12] -> C you don't know exactly what. That's still a point for data to leak, though, should the mapping be discovered (encoded elsewhere in your database or somewhere in your code).

<comment><USER4> Your solution of mapping to a grading system A,B,C,D; or terrible, crap, better, best was mentioned in another thread about this article. It's a common thought, however it's incorrect because you're still leaking substantial information about passwords. By storing entropy of any kind: whole number, graded, > threshold, etc you are weakening your password hash. This is completely unnecessary where better solutions exist: TFA

<comment><USER3> You've repeated what I wrote and I'm not sure why. I was responding to the original comment asking if rounding or similar could work and said that it still leaked data. Which is what you've written here in response to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There was a question on Information Security (Stackexchange) about a year ago which was exactly adressing this issue:

[https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/92512/how- much-...](https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/92512/how-much-does- knowing-the-zxcvbn-password-strength-help-an-attacker)

This was a follow up of a more general and well received question (How critical is it to keep your password length secret?), where some of the answers imho are a really worth reading:

[https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/92233/how- criti...](https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/92233/how-critical-is- it-to-keep-your-password-length-secret)

</comment><comment><USER6> Since links to Github search results are hip on HN recently: [https://github.com/search?q=zxcvbn- ruby&type=Code](https://github.com/search?q=zxcvbn-ruby&type=Code)

</comment><comment><USER7> >>If you don't think about security on a regular basis, this probably looks normal.

Can someone help me understand if this is an assumption or a status quo?

Then, what does storing this information gain you from an app owner perspective?

<comment><USER8> It looks like an assumption, and a poor one at that. I'm certainly no security expert, and the danger here is almost absurdly obvious.

That said - the article addresses the claimed advantage of storing the value:

"The rationale was that as technology progressed and password cracking became easier, users could be contacted to update their password."

<comment><USER9> _" The rationale was that as technology progressed and password cracking became easier, users could be contacted to update their password."_

I would argue that this a misguided motivation for storing the password entropy. Bcrypt is purposefully designed to combat the problem of more efficient brute-forcing due to future GPU/CPU speed improvements by incorporating a 'work factor'. At any time, application owners can specifically increase the work factor and the hashing process will be intentionally slowed further. In this way, the future reversibility of the password hashes can be reduced without requiring that users update their passwords.</comment></comment></comment>


Morocco launches fleet of DJI drones to tackle coronavirus from the sky - <AUTHOR> https://www.scmp.com/tech/gear/article/3083093/morocco-launches-fleet-dji-drones-tackle-coronavirus-sky <comment><USER2> I saw videos from China of trucks driving through cities with huge floggers, it was said they were spraying disinfectant. It reminded me of US mosquito foggers from decades ago.

I wonder, is massive outdoor disinfectant spray even useful / effective? Let alone considering the amount a drone can carry...</comment>


Manufacturing hub starts work on first zero-labor factory - <AUTHOR> http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2015-05/03/content_20606573.htm <comment><USER2> Too late to be the first lights-out factory. Japanese have those already.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lights_out_%28manufacturing%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lights_out_%28manufacturing%29)</comment>


Ask HN: North Korean Revolution as a Global Community Project ? - <AUTHOR>

First and foremost I'm an idealist. I've always had a great interest in both politics and culture. Especially in South East Asia.
You'd have to have lived under a rock not to have noticed the many and frequent horror stories of North Korea. And every times an article or a video report pops up in my news stream I throw myself at it. Having read much and varied coverage of the state and it's people. You can't help but to get angry and vastly hopeless at the situation. From a modern, western perspective a great deal of questions arise: How can the global community allow this to happen? Why is seemingly no-one doing anything real about it? etc..
Everything considered the only solution in sight, and one that has been lurking a lot in the background lately, is war. Invasion, presumably from the South, with American/International support.
That however, in my view, would be the worst possible solution. With NK's standing army of 1.000.000 soldiers, and possibly nuclear weapons, it would be an absolute disaster.
With great inspiration from other Asian countries, I personally dream of the day the NK people themselves rise against their utterly corrupt, delusional government.
My question (though long under way) is this: Do you think it is at all possible to create a community around the goal of assisting a NK revolution ?
Note, I'm trying to steer clear of any BandAid-like thing, but instead imagine a bunch of smart people with insight and ideas coming together to create viable solutions to the problem.
May the power of the Internet and Global Community bring freedom to the North Korean People ! :) <comment><USER2> Think about who you're dealing with. If you become truly effective, you might get a unpleasant visit.

As for how this came about, the DPRK has had a nuclear armed protector since August 1949 ... which strangely enough is 10 months before they started the war.</comment>


Japan's independent kids [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/520489027747/japans-independent-kids-the-feed <comment><USER2> To bookend this, a family member who lectures at a Japanese university has to endure "parent teacher" meetings for her twenty-one year old students.

<comment><USER3> based on what I've heard about universities there this surprises me, unless it's teacher's business to help get students a job there shouldn't really be much to have interventions over.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's a tough commute to school. The kid isn't just taking a train. The kid has to take the Yamanote line, one of Tokyo's busiest lines, and change at Shinjuku station, the world's busiest transport hub.

Japan has very low speed limits in dense areas: 40km/h in cities, 30km/h on side streets. That reduces the risk to pedestrians a lot.

<comment><USER5> Japan also has two things the USA doesn't: High density, resulting in low walking distances between important points; and a very good public transit system, reducing walking distances even more. Both of these contribute a lot to minimizing child/car interaction, in addition to the strict traffic laws.

<comment><USER3> sorry but kids walk a pretty good distance to school. high density doesn't mean school is down the block, plus some school is based on your skill level not your distance from, so you may be in the upper public school across town because you did so well. What Japan has is a lot more responsibility and empathy at crosswalks. They are used to traffic and respectful of others. Selfishness leads to speeding, mistakes which leads to crashes.

<comment><USER5> You underestimate just how _low_ density many parts of the USA are: [https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-87.6995585,6409m/dat...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-87.6995585,6409m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en)

In that area without parents driving their kids around, it would mean many kilometers of walking, due to the lack of public transit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if kids in NYC are also taking trains to school like kids in Tokyo. On a separate note, growing up in Japan, the concept of renrakumou (telephone contact graph) was quite interesting. When there is something important from school announcement, people on this graph would traverse down the tree and contact the node to spread the word. [http://oshirase.x0.com/jpg/templtes/renrakumou.jpg](http://oshirase.x0.com/jpg/templtes/renrakumou.jpg)

<comment><USER7> These graphs were a staple of emergency procedures in the pre-Internet era. Still are in some places. My mom was a teacher; this is how school closings worked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> ..two minutes in and queue the white guy in a kimono giving social commentary on Japanese culture.

<comment><USER3> yeahh that looked pretty cheesy but it's more of a comfortable summer clothes he's got on I thought, not actually a man's dress kimono or anything. He's a writer too so it's like he's just hanging around the house in his pajamas</comment></comment>


New YC Startup: Buxfer - <AUTHOR> http://www.buxfer.com/index.php <comment><USER2> I'm imagining two intersecting lines. The positively sloped line represents the amount of time saved increasing as transactions of this kind increase. The other negatively sloped line is the cognitive overhead of using the system, i.e. higher when the number of transactions is small. I'm trying to figure out where exactly they cross, because while I like the system in theory I can't really see myself using it, at least at the moment.

P.S. Congrats on launching to the founder(s).

<comment><USER3> Well, that's a challenge for us, then. Let's see if we can make the y-coord of the overhead line start below the time-saved line :P

Also, we'd love to know what is causing your inertia at this moment.

<comment><USER2> OK, I sent you guys my thoughts using the feedback link.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Congrats to the founders for building and launching a very nice-looking site.

At this point though, I'm more likely to use something like wesabe for keeping track of my spending since it understands my existing online bank accounts rather than requiring me to enter transactions by hand - that seems like a killer feature to me since my spending these days is overwhelmingly electronic.

[disclaimer: I haven't used either tool. My opinion is based only on having seen the online demos.]

<comment><USER3> This is Ashwin - one of Buxfer's founders. Glad you liked the look of the site.

We do allow you to import transactions from your bank and credit card accounts - provided they are in Quicken or Microsoft Money format. Integrating directly with banks is on the cards as well.

One of our goals (besides tracking shared expenses) is to be able to better reason about cash transactions. Our experience as students indicated we spent close to 30% of our income(!) on coke and coffee combined. To capture all these little transactions, we allow reporting expenses via text-messages. (More ways coming soon!) Ultimately the goal is to understand *all* your expenses completely at a central location.

<comment><USER5> Integrating directly with banks is on the cards

Did you mean 'in the cards' or are you an Agile/XP shop?

<comment><USER3> This could just be my English crapping out at the wrong time. All I meant was "coming soon"!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think it looks great. Well done taking the concept and getting it to the "just right" stage without overdoing it. The start page/index is perfect- in 5 seconds I know pretty much what it does and whether or not it's something that I've been waiting for.

Does anyone over there mind if I ask what the plans are for monetization? Paid subscriptions at some point? Tie-ins with other financial institutions like credit card companies? Ads? (it looks like too clean of a site for that, but I'm sure you could make it work if that's the plan).

<comment><USER3> Your guesses are pretty accurate. And ordered from most - least preferable. :) We'd really hate to place ads particularly if they reduce usability and cleanliness of the site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really like the ability to just use my existing accounts, it was enough to have me take a little look around.

<comment><USER8> Me too

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks a little too cartoony for a financial app. Actually, umm, if Windows media player looked like this, I'd say the same thing: Too cartoony. Just to give you a baseline.

<comment><USER10> Probably the problem is just the color scheme; it's fruit salad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wow, I have a half implemented (and nowhere near as nice-looking) version of this app on my computer. I guess I should have searched a little deeper before starting to convert my finance spreadsheet to a web app... back to to brainstorming for me.

I suppose I better sign up, then!

</comment><comment><USER12> I read Buxfer's review on TechCrunch earlier today; congratulations to YC and the founders on getting featured there! :) The site looks great but they have some tough challenges ahead since Buxfer is coming late in this market.

The key is to resist the temptation of copying features off their larger competitor (Wesabe) and build something different. I think a great lesson we have all learned from Reddit is that a startup can survive in the face of tough competition merely by filling the gaps left by their larger competitor. So far Buxfer seems to have done a great job at it :)

\- Jawad Shuaib

</comment><comment><USER13> Hi, What web framework are you guys using? Rails? Django? something else?

(Awesome product btw)

<comment><USER3> Just object-oriented PHP. No framework, yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Isn't this just billmonk?

</comment><comment><USER15> If my bank allows it, can you access my bank account? I think this is a great idea that can even upstage Quicken. I stopped using Quicken - it is a pain to have duplication. However I cannot annotate my transactions with my bank. (this cheque was a donation for charity http://lydiapress.com). As a result, actually, I dont keep track of my account (shouldnt confess this here!) Yes, it is a great idea because IF I GIVE YOU READ-ONLY ACCESS TO MY ACCOUNT, WHY SHOULD THE BANK CARE? WOW!</comment>


Mojolicious 4.0 released: Perl real-time web framework - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kraih.com/post/50517069291/mojolicious-4-0-released-perl-real-time-web-framework

<comment><USER2> Awesome, Mojolicious is a truly brilliant web app framework and it just keeps getting better!</comment>


MyTomorrows raises further €10M to help access drugs in development - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/09/mytomorrows-raises-10m/ <comment><AUTHOR> Link to previous HN article+comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8571717](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8571717)</comment>


Show HN: Mentat, webapp that helps jobseekers reach out to companies (YC S16) - <AUTHOR> https://thementat.com/?utm_source=HN&utm_medium=Post&utm_campaign=614 <comment><AUTHOR> Hi Hackers,

We built this service after realizing the best way to land a job is to network through personalized emails. Our platform links job postings (found on job boards and company websites) to the email addresses of people who work at that company involved with the hiring process (talent acquisition, recruiters, managers etc).

We'd argue it provides much more concrete help for jobseekers than a LinkedIn Premium account, so we priced it at the same subscription fee ($30). There's a free 10-day trial you can cancel anytime; we'd love if you could take a look and give us some constructive feedback. Many thanks!

Cheers, -Mentat Team</comment>


Spooning by bitbucket - <AUTHOR> https://bitbucket.org/spooning/

<comment><USER2> As someone who pairs 90% of my working time, I can't help but smile at the Bitbucket Flickr gallery:

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/bitbucketspooning/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Narrator guy is great at being terrible actor.

</comment><comment><USER4> April Fools Day is becoming a 3 day holiday this year.

<comment><USER5> From early morning UTC+23 to late night UTC-23, I suppose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Simple! Fork, Spoon, Knife! how did they keep a straight face?

<comment><USER7> I wonder if they have a chopsticks version. Actually, never mind: that's pair piano-playing.

<comment><USER8> And what do you mean by that?

<comment><USER7> It's a two-part joke:

1) The video talks about forking code, pair-programming with spooning, and knifing (pull requests): fork, spoon, and knife. I just wondered if they have a chopsticks version, for people who prefer using chopsticks.

2) Then I realized there is already a context that involves pairing and chopsticks: Chopsticks is a common piano duet. Of course, it doesn't _have_ to be played by two people...

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q_0N79afqU>

(The video begins with the version you typically hear kids playing, but then, well, you have to watch!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This was pretty painful to watch as a gay technologist.

<comment><USER10> I don't quite get how you could see this as anything other than a harmless april's fool prank. This is not homophobia, it's just comedy. Lighten up[1].

[1]: Yes, I read that article on sexism the other week… call me insensitive, but I think lighten up is a perfectly valid answer in this case.

<comment><USER11> > This is not homophobia, it's just comedy.

Stop it! You guys are killing me!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As a one-armed programmer, I think I'm srsly offended by this.

</comment><comment><USER13> It would be nice to have these labelled as April 1st posts.

<comment><USER14> Andy Baio used to catalog embarrassingly lame April 1st pranks in a post titled "Internet Jackass Day". I've always been a bit disappointed the name didn't catch on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Anyone else noticed the "distribited" typo?

<comment><USER16> "bitbucket". It's intentional.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Dingle, Barry

</comment><comment><USER18> They don't even press the keyboard. :/

</comment><comment><USER19> I really did not enjoy that.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is seriously creepy

<comment><USER21> I'd say it's less "creepy" than "awkward." Which is exactly why it's humorous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> ROFL !

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra Eww.</comment>


Coding is not "fun," it's technically and ethically complex - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/987170/coding-is-not-fun-its-technically-and-ethically-complex/ <comment><USER2> At the risk of sounding obvious, simple programs are simple to create whereas complex programs are exponentially more complex to create. Add in more people with more complex communication paths amongst the team and your complexity may easily transcend what's feasible. The biggest problem is inexperienced developers and project managers can't recognize the complexity spiraling out of control beforehand but rest assured when it happens the coding is not "fun"!

</comment><comment><USER3> > It's better to admit that coding is complicated, technically and ethically.

Yep--that's what makes it fun.</comment>


Show HN: Github for recipes - <AUTHOR> http://www.forkingrecipes.com <comment><USER2> You need to hire a designer for this. Cooking/recipes/food markets are really visually driven. You also need to define what a fork is right on the landing page. A fork for a cook is not the same as a fork for a programmer. What you should have is a good header area that has the application work flow explained in graphics.

Example:

        Alice liked Juan's recide for thai rice.
        She wanted to create her own version. Alice
        forked Juan's recipe and modified it to fit
        tastes.

        In forkingrecipes, the act of forking is when
        you give someone else's recipe your own touch.
        Thus creating a new recipe for others to use and fork.

I know a good designer who can help you with this, by the way.

<comment><AUTHOR> I totally agree, unfortunately I don't have money to pay one and finding someone to work with me for free hasn't been easy :(.

<comment><USER3> Send me an email. Working on something similar and am a designer :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We launched Fork the Cookbook about the same time as Forking Recipes too. You might want to check it out: <http://forkthecookbook.com>

We try not to call it Github for Recipes because that's not our target market (although other people have called us Github for Recipes)

We blog over at <http://theforkingchef.com> so you might also want to check that out.

OK, self promotion over

<comment><USER5> I like your site's presentation quite a bit more (ForkingRecipes just comes across as data carelessly tossed into Bootstrap), though I don't quite like how the food images are mostly obscured until you hover over them individually.

<comment><USER4> Understandable. We're working on a variation that doesn't do that. UX is hard yo.

Fork the Cookbook has existed longer than Forking Recipes, and we've done hundreds of user tests. It turns out users really like certain things, and so the current darkened background is a compromise on that solution.

We found out that users liked pictures, and also liked text (surprise?). In the next test we're doing, we're going to be swapping the order of appearance to see if the CTRs increase

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> \o/ I asked for this 16 days ago (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5033978>) and now it exists. God I love HackerNews :D

Probably not related, though still cool.

What I'd like to see though, is for all the pictures to be of food. There's a lot of happy faces, but the point of a cook book is to make me feel hungry when looking at the pictures. Not sure how to achieve that though.

<comment><USER4> Hey you may want to check out Fork the Cookbook [0]. It was there long before you asked the question.

<http://forkthecookbook.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cucumbertown does this very well. They allow you to take a recipe and fork it – called "Write a variation" (on the left) [1]. IIRC quite a few recipes there are created this way.

[1] <http://www.cucumbertown.com/recipes/55228/baked-mac-cheese>

</comment><comment><USER8> I like it, although I think there are other organizing principles to explore. Seconded on all the 'fork' comments its not at all intuitive to a chef what you mean here.

At present the top level abstraction is the recipe which you've sort of equated to 'source code' but when you look at something like Github or Sourceforge the high level abstraction is the 'project' and in the food world the closest I could come up with is 'cuisine.'

Consider one of my daughters favorite sites: <http://smittenkitchen.com/> this site has lots of interesting recipes, and one might use them as a top level abstraction. So you've got the 'smittenkitchen' project equivlent or maybe 'smittenkitchen-breakfast' project which is breakfasts from smitten kitchen.

Then there are chefs which are much more important in the cooking world than individual developers are in the programming world. That is because the chef's 'taste' really defines the product in a way that is fundamental to the enjoyment. So you might want to build a '<Chef>-<category>' type model. Then you could do a pull of <Ramsay>-<appetizer> and get various appetizers that Gordon Ramsay makes.

Of course that will get you into a licensing battle. Because like fonts, recipes have this weird quasi relationship to name vs instructions (can't copyright instructions, can copyright the name, google Font Copyright for more info)

Conceptually I think this is a really winner idea (sadly easy to copy) but if you get the right mix going and critical mass it could easily be as successful as github or sourceforge.

<comment><USER4> Hey, at Fork the Cookbook, we're doing just that right now! It's one of the primary reasons why we said Search is Hard [0]. And we're working hard on search.

We've also put a lot of time and effort into researching the licensing issues, as well as design issues: how to present certain things like diffs, and stuff. So if you like, you should check out Fork the Cookbook: <http://forkthecookbook.com>

[0] [http://theforkingchef.com/post/40890655560/search-is-hard- pa...](http://theforkingchef.com/post/40890655560/search-is-hard-part-1)

<comment><USER9> From a quick browse, I don't see any way to view diffs?

<comment><USER4> Hey there, it's not a feature we've pushed out live yet. There is code to see diffs, but no on the public facing UI yet.

The reason is this: We don't want to aim at the tech crowd (which is why you haven't seen a Show HN from Fork the Cookbook). The tech crowd knows what diffs are. We're used to reading things that look like this:

        + def function(var1, var2):
        - def oldfunction(var1, var2):

But the public aren't used to reading stuff like this. What we're working on is a comprehensive way to explain what diffs are, and what it means. So we're back at square one, designing a representation that is human worthy.

It'll take time. Sorry

<comment><USER9> I'm working on something in a domain not dissimilar to recipes, so I'm always interested to see different diff presentations.

<comment><USER4> Tell you what, I'll let you know first thing when we have diffs ready to be presented to the public

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like how easy recipe discovery is on forkingrecipes. I think the waterfall layout and search bar were good decisions.

Mappum and I made something pretty similar for the last Node Knockout.

<http://foodhub.jit.su/>

Like orangethirty said, foodies tend to be really visual, so we encourage the user to take a high quality photo by making it the focus of their recipe page.

Good job, I'm excited to see where you go with this. :)

</comment><comment><USER11> [Forkinit](<http://forkinit.com/>) does a good job of this but hasn't been updated in a while. You might check them out for other ideas in this space. Looks like you have a great start.

</comment><comment> the-kenny Just like every other cool page for managing recipes: Please add automatic conversion from/to metric units.

<comment><USER12> And even between standard units. I have a re pie that calls for 6 tablespoons of water. I always have to translate that to fractional cups

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I like it. It seems you are aiming at geeks. And I think geeks want a powerful search interface and this is why I haven't found a website i really like. I want to make queries like "Recipes with Tomatoes, Paprika but without meat of type soup" or "I only have Garlic, Paprika, bread, Cream, flour, and sugar, eggs and spices , what is the closest meaningful lunch? Not in natural language, but with a interface. Like a textarea for "what i have" "what i don't have/like", and "What kind of meal would it be" each.

<comment><USER14> "I only have Garlic, Paprika, bread, Cream, flour, and sugar, eggs and spices". Thats not a sane way to cook. You can season your eggs on toast (scrambled eggs with garlic makes a change), but there is nothing else sanely cookable form that list. You need to shop better, this is not a search problem. (I appreciate that you made up that list, but thats not the point).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Quoting <http://www.badstartupidea.com/>:

First, go and find out about Github. Figure out what it is they do, how they attract users, and how they make money. Github is already operating well in the Programming space, but perhaps the same basic ideas can be applied in the Cooking space. That's where you come in.

Edit: I think it's a great idea, it's just funny that that site mentioned this after only a couple refreshes.

<comment><USER16> I assume that's where it started <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5119787>

<comment><USER15> That's really cool, actually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Having looked at some of the recipes, it might be nice to take the job of layout/formatting away from the recipe submitter and offer some differnt layout options to the person viewing it.

For example, some recipes include the accompanying photos inline, while others collect the photos at the end. If instead, the submitter merely tagged the photos according to what step they accompanied, then the website code can lay them out beatifully in a number of different ways to suit different viewers.

I think I'm thinking something along the lines of LaTeX philosophy: You provide the content and leave the layout to the experts/computer. So you don't write that "Zest of 2 lemons" should be part of a bulleted list, you write that it is an ingredient and leave it to the layout to put it in a suitably formatted ingredient list.

Another advantage is you reduce the ability of less savvy users to make parts of your site look ugly.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great idea, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I started something similar[1] last Christmas (but lost interest as I never documented my own experiments). It's a great idea and there's need for a de facto standard source for recipes and cooking instructions.

My "next step" was to contact sous chefs of famous restaurants.

[1] <http://palatelab.com/>

Edit: rephrased.

<comment><USER19> Maybe Google's Recipe microdata?

[http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...](http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=173379)

Which is standardized at schema.org: <http://www.schema.org/Recipe>

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've thought a lot about this idea as something to add to my site Eat This Much (<http://www.eatthismuch.com>)

I have a pretty basic implementation of it right now - you can click a "personalize recipe" button on recipe pages to make modifications to it, and watch the nutrition change as you make changes. As a premium member, you can then have the meal plan generator suggest your modified version of the recipe in place of the original. When I have the time, I'm hoping to make all the existing branches and variations browsable.

There are some pretty great suggestions here I think. It would be really cool if you could build out an API similar to yummly's for serving up recipes. With different branches for each recipe, you could easily search through the variations to satisfy filters based on a user's tastes.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey Guys,

I'm the creator of Forking Recipes, I'll be happy to answer any questions you have and thanks for taking a look!

<comment><USER21> I agree with the other commenters: _great_ idea, but needs a designer.

By the way, are you based in Chicago? I met somebody at the Chicago HN meetup last year who was talking about building this exact idea, and I loved the idea back then too. Are you that person by chance?

<comment><AUTHOR> I am actually in Chicago, but I haven't been to a HN meetup so you're probably thinking of someone else.

<comment><USER22> To the GP, that was probably me. Unfortunately, we never got anything off the ground.

dpick, I'd be happy to share the ideas we were kicking around when thinking about this if you want to shoot me an email: john [at] nineteeneightd.com.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> <http://www.cucumbertown.com> does this very well. Cleaner UI and seamless experience. Also has a lot of celebrity chefs onboard as users.

</comment><comment><USER24> I know that twitter boostrap is a great tool to start a project and to prove the concept. I love the idea as a amateur cook and developer (not amateur :D), but if you want to reach a larger public (non developers) I think you should invest some time (and probably money) into a good designer (by the way, is a website where we could really "rent" a webdesigner? I know some where you coul rent a coder but not a designer).

<comment><USER25> 99designs and designcrowd, to name some..

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I love this. Every time I look up a recipe, I read the comments to see popular modifications and tweaks to the original recipe, and thought it would be awesome if those could branch off and become their own, with the most popular 'forks' floating to the top (even dethroning the original recipe, if they are indeed better). I'm glad to see this come to fruition!

</comment><comment><USER27> Interesting application of software development paradigms to cooking. I think it would be useful to have categories, e.g. breakfast/dinner/dessert, hot/cold, and suchlike. And maybe a regular 'featured menu' on the front page to illustrate a meal combination, with a nice photograph shown and some encouraging body text.

</comment><comment><USER28> this idea is awesome. The "forking" idea is great for recipes, but you need almost something like a difftool to be able to tell what's different and why? I think with a better UI and way's for users to interact with each other this could be extremely cool. Stick with it and good luck :)

<comment><AUTHOR> There actually is a really basic diff tool right now (Click on revisions on the recipe page). I'm working on creating a more advanced one now. Any ideas on what a good interface might be?

<comment><USER12> A diff visualization for ingredients should be pretty easy, you could show left and right and the delta between them as three distinct columns.

As for other distinctions, such as "mince" instead of "dice", that would be tricker, but you could probably do that with a human-friendly strikethrough coupled with a handwriting typeface to indicate what was changed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> <http://www.chefday.com/> is Heroku for cooking :)

<comment><USER30> I thought Heroku for cooking would be that I, as a user, upload a recipe, and the food is cooked and delivered to me as a completed dish. If anything this is more like Arduino for cooking, maybe? An accessible jumping off point for an intimidating task?

<comment><USER29> Fair point. But with Heroku, you still need to build your app yourself. Coming up with a recipe is really easy compared to build an app from scratch. Maybe we're the Ruby on Rails of cooking. What do you think?

<comment><USER30> That seems like a fair assessment. I didn't give it much thought before, but now I'm really curious about the model; it this supposed to be exclusively for dinner parties, or a way for bachelors to learn to cook? I don't live in New York, and there isn't a ton of detail on the front page. How far in advance do I order? Do I pay a flat rate for n meals a month/week? I'm guessing the invite comes with more details, but looking at the landing page I have a lot of "How does this fit in my life?" sort of questions.

<comment><USER29> Thanks for the feedback. I'll update the landing this week. The most common use cases we have so far: dates / young couples that want spend quality time, friends dinners, supper clubs, cooking enthusiasts who want to learn new recipes from top Chefs... You just order the recipe you want: no subscription yet(people have requested it). Cut off time is 10pm the day before your delivery. If you have friends in NYC, feel free to share the joy of cooking :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> You should remove all of the pictures that do not show the food and replace all of the low quality pictures as well. When I went to your website the first thing i saw was a bunch of faces and non-appetizing looking onions. You want to make the food look amazing.

</comment><comment><USER32> Very nice! I'd like to have the option (but not the requirement) to log in with oauth(2) from Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc.

Your site will get a lot more traction if you implement that, I think. Most people (even non-techie folks) are suffering from account proliferation.

<comment><USER33> Actually, its been shown that the confusion of which account type to use is worse than the bonus of having options at signup. I forget who did the testing, but non-techies have trouble remembering which they used as well as understanding what it means to "sign in with..".

<comment><USER32> I'd be interested in seeing the study. For me, at least (and I think for many others) the thought of creating yet another login is enough to make me back out.

<comment><USER33> Okay, I misremembered a bit. They showed that a tiny portion of people used social login (~3%) and that the gain they thought they'd made with them (fewer forgot password/username issues) was due to an unrelated change. The tiny portion shows that it can't be that important (plus, how many of the 3% that took advantage of it would have left without those buttons?).

The study can be found here: [http://blog.mailchimp.com/social-login-buttons- arent-worth-i...](http://blog.mailchimp.com/social-login-buttons-arent-worth- it/)

I apologize for the misinformation in my first comment, but I think my point remains. That said, I feel similarly to you - I just think that a much smaller portion of people feel that way than you realize.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is awesome. I think it's a coincidence because the other day on HN someone said something about a "github for recipes". I'm not saying that to be coy or to be condescending, simply coincidental.

Keep up the good work! As an avid amateur chef, this could be fun.

</comment><comment><USER35> I like it. You need to improve the editor (normal people won't understand markup, just have a text box for ingredients, another for directions and a list for images).

You also need tags so I can tag a recipe as 'Asian' or 'BBQ' to make it organizable.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is pretty amazing. I had thought how cool it'd be to have something like this a bunch of times (specially when I want to find simplified curry recipes.)

I seem to recall someone put something similar on HN a few months ago. Any ideas who it was?

</comment><comment><USER37> That's cool!! Can this be adapted for curriculums? I am a medical student and have been posting medical curriculum at <https://github.com/aloo/hack_medicine>

<comment><AUTHOR> It totally could be, send me an email and we can discuss it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Neat. When I saw the headline I thought that this would be too technical to get traction with non-geeks but it looks nice and I could see it becoming popular especially with particular diet communities like paleo etc.

</comment><comment><USER39> I find it waaaay too geeky for a cooking website. The idea could be useful but as it is right now, it's very hard to understand how it's supposed to work. (Revision 2, what?)

</comment><comment><USER40> Great idea! It seems obvious in hindsight, at least to people who understand forking and dvcs. Which is great.

Let's see how non-tech people are able to understand and use such concepts.

</comment><comment><USER41> We made something very similar for Node Knockout (the 48-hour hackathon), <http://foodhub.jit.su>.

</comment><comment><USER42> User experience still needs a lot of improvement, but I love it. congratulations.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> <http://startupsupper.com>

<comment><USER27> Nice idea but the design looks like an poster for Trainspotting. Expecting to be emailed recipes for deep fried mars bars any time now.

<comment><USER43> u just wait...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Great idea. Needs a better app and UX but really good idea. Good job!

</comment><comment><USER45> You missed the opportunity to use the name GitCipes.

<comment><USER46> And the average visitor would end up asking themselves "What does 'git sypes' mean?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Why not build this right on top of GitHub?

<comment><USER48> Because most cooks are not developers and don't have Github accounts, I guess.

<comment><USER49> I think trhaynes meant, Why not build this on the Github API?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> What an awesome idea! Love the site.

</comment><comment><USER51> Man, I had this very idea a few months ago. :-)</comment>