How is Google's SEO team structured? - <AUTHOR> I assume a lot of secrecy is needed. How do they deal with it? <comment><USER2> I am guessing that there is not a a lot of secrecy needed because the SEO team is not the search team.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, I meant the search team. oh well.</comment></comment>


YouTube Built a Radicalization Machine for the Far-Right - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-youtube-pulled-these-men-down-a-vortex-of-far-right-hate <comment><USER2> I'll give them points for mentioning of Sundar Pichai. As usual, no mention of Susan Wojcicki. Great article, though.

What Youtube has done to the world is a problem that is only going to get worse as more of Youtube's viewership reaches adulthood.</comment>


Announcing our pricing (including consulting rates) - <AUTHOR> https://keen.io/pricing

<comment><USER2> The ramp from free to paying customer is too high. Either remove the free plan or add a lower bracket. The way you priced things is cute, but shows that these are numbers that you made up. People might look at them and question you, your business, and the value you provide. The standard pricing model [1] works. Stick to it.

[1] - Use .99, .97, or .95 instead of whole numbers. Use odd numbers. Example: 127.99 or 129.99 for your lowest plan.

.99 is for regular prices. .97 is for lowered prices (but still considered regular). .95 is for promotional prices. Special prices may include either, but are ruled by different pricing options.

Edit:

Don't take my word for it and test it.

<comment><USER3> > _The way you priced things is cute, but shows that these are numbers that > you made up_

What it sounds like you're driving toward is better documenting the rationale behind the cost. To my untrained eye, the costs scaled with usage in a fairly familiar pattern.

What would you do to better illustrate the logic behind a pricing structure?

> _The standard pricing model [1] works. Stick to it. [1] - Use .99, .97, or > .95 instead of whole numbers. Use odd numbers. Example: 127.99 or 129.99 for > your lowest plan._

When I see "x.99" prices I always think "annoying gimmick" and typically associate it with low cost consumer goods.

Is there any evidence this type of pricing is appropriate for B2B products?

<comment><USER4> I was just thinking that consumers of B2B products aren't as easily influenced with pricing gimmicks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For me personally, "128, 256, 768, 2048" pattern looks like a product of nerdiness to the prejudice of real value. And, since real value is likely to be less that nerdic numbers, I instantly feel cheated by looking onto these rates.

</comment><comment><USER6> Your pricing worries me. It looks like you have just made the numbers up and don't know what your costs are.

I feel the starting price is fairly high but that's not to say it won't work for you.

<comment><USER7> I've seen a lot of comments to this effect, and I don't get it. Just to pick an example more or less at random, Mixpanel's prices [1] are all multiples of $50; how is that any less arbitrary than using multiples of $128?

[1] <https://mixpanel.com/pricing/>

<comment><USER6> For me, I don't mind their pricing because it doesn't look gimmicky. I like the idea of using the 128,256,etc as the pricing model but I don't agree with it in practice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Love the 128, 256, 768, 2048 prices :)

</comment><comment><USER9> Your rate looks arbitrary enough that it flipped my "this must be algorithmic!" flag. But, its probably not.

Even if its not, it would be cool to hang a shingle as a consultant and have a variable rate based on how much work is in the pipeline. This would be an awesome visual and may actually help choose the optimum hourly rate over the long term.

Edit: hah, just saw the pattern. Still, interesting idea you piqued there. Surely it must have been done somewhere.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We'd love your feedback on consulting as a piece of our business model.

The main reason we're doing it is to put our customers at ease while we continue learning, not because we want it to remain a substantive part of our revenue at scale (because the linear opex is unattractive to us as businesspeople)

<comment><USER4> Basing an API off a new company is scary. Especially for the Enterprise & Custom levels. Do you offer some sort of source code guarantee?

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally understand that.

Q: What do you mean by source code guarantee?

<comment><USER10> Often times, particularly in enterprise software, part of the terms of a deal include a "source code escrow" clause. This means that if you go out of business, the customer with this term gets your platform's source code released to them so their investment into your technology doesn't implode completely.

<comment><USER11> Gotcha. Thanks pfab!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Open Food Facts – A free food products database - <AUTHOR> http://world.openfoodfacts.org <comment><USER2> I love this idea. I have wanted to build something similar for a long time. One of the key features I believe would be to track ingredient changes over time, per product.

I put a great amount of effort into purchasing products without specific ingredients for the allergy concerns of my family. One of those is High Fructose Corn Syrup. I had finally found a brand of BBQ sauce that was HFCS free, and used it for quite a long time. One day I became curious if the ingredients had changed, and sure enough, the company had started using HFCS at home point.

Tracking these sorts of changes of course requires a great amount of crowd- sourcing effort, but I believe that it's worth so much more than the effort put in. In my case, it was just HFCS, and not much of a problem. But had it been one of the allergens that we have to avoid, that would have caused a much bigger problem.

Great work, keep it up! I look forward to contributing.

<comment><USER3> Indeed it will be very interesting to see how products evolve over time. Open Food Facts also has a "Food Archeology" project. The idea is to find old products and put them in the database as well. Anyone knows soda cans collectors? :-)

Something very interesting as well is to compare products accross different countries, first to identify differences, and second to see if there is a correlation between those differences and differences in the prevalence of some affections like diabetes or obesity.

<comment><USER4> There's an interesting NPR Planet Money article on a related topic [http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/06/05/319084976/why-a- pa...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/06/05/319084976/why-a-pack-of- peanut-butter-m-ms-weighs-a-tiny-bit-less-than-a-regular-pack)

It might be difficult to track the products which change labels as ingredients change.

Another interesting idea would be to see how product lines evolve. Watch as the product line is split into two or more lines to target different types of consumers (or merged for that matter), while at the same time keeping record of ingredients and other interesting info. Sounds fun!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Would it be possible to display the data on a "per package" basis instead of the usual "per 100 g" or "per serving" basis?

I'm not a stupid person, but I still can't for the life of me figure out why the food industry deemed it necessary to invent a psudo-unit, "the serving", that differs depending on what food you're eating and what _brand_ of that food you're eating.

<comment><USER6> FDA calculated the reference amounts for persons 4 years of age or older to reflect the amount of food customarily consumed per eating occasion by persons in this population group. These reference amounts are based on data set forth in appropriate national food consumption surveys.

[1] [http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/cfrs...](http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/cfrsearch.cfm?fr=101.12)

<comment><USER7> right, and the standard user of orange tic tacs only eats one per occasion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a fantastic idea.

My only worry is that the owners will be legally hounded from every corner of the world due to the fact that most large food corporations don't really want you to know what's in their products.

Like the fact that "orange juice" is basically rancid orange sugar water left sitting in large vats for up to a year that is doused with orange oil before sale, apparently. [0]

I would get some legal cousel were I persuing this venture.

[0] [http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/orange-juice-is-premium- juic...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/orange-juice-is-premium-juice- actually-more-natural-1.2902004)

<comment><USER9> Where are you getting that the orange juice goes rancid in storage? Evaporation and concentration is a way of preserving juice, not a way of destroying it. And vat is such a loaded term. Concentrate is stored in closed stainless steel tanks, just like every other liquid beverage, not some concrete trough.

<comment><USER10> Did you actually read the linked article? It's about not-from-concentrate orange juice, so your entire comment is basically irrelevant.

<comment><USER9> There's also nothing about "Rancid" juice in the article either. I don't understand the discontent with adding orange oil to orange juice. The orange oil is made from the juicing process as a byproduct from the skins.

There's hundreds of varieties of vanilla flavor extracts available from "flavor companies that also make perfumes" (which is a false equivalence, implying that a perfume is inherently toxic, synthetic and evil), all made from vanilla beans. Problem as well?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great idea -- as a user of Musicbrainz, it's right up my alley. I went ahead and made some updates to a nutella [http://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/009800895007](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/009800895007) page, and it works as I'd expect.

The Android app has problems, though.

1\. The barcode scanner doesn't work, at least on the product I mentioned above. I tried it with the Barcode Scanner app, and it works fine there.

2\. No barcode search. Since I used the Barcode Scanner app to get the barcode, I wanted to try to paste the result into OFF. No go.

3\. The scan help text "Scan the barcode to find or add a product" is very hard to read on a dark background. There's probably a better way to show this help text.

4\. Pressing physical back button in "scan" mode does not go back: [https://github.com/openfoodfacts/openfoodfacts- android/issue...](https://github.com/openfoodfacts/openfoodfacts- android/issues/21)

<comment><USER12> Interestingly enough, there is at least also a "nutella" (not capitalized) for Nutella bought in Germany: [http://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/4008400401621/nutella...](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/4008400401621/nutella- ferrero)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Today I learned that you can graph data from the website. It's a great way to see how one can make better decisions with open food facts [http://world.openfoodfacts.org/cgi/search.pl?action=process&...](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/cgi/search.pl?action=process&tagtype_0=categories&tag_contains_0=contains&tag_0=breakfast%20cereal&sort_by=unique_scans_n&page_size=20&axis_x=sugars&axis_y=fat&graph=1)

<comment><USER14> Whoa, it's really worrying how much sugar is in all these products. And this is even without all the starches I guess -- considering a lot of rye products are still on the left side.

<comment><USER15> Wow. Mountain Dew stands out with 77g of sugar per 100g in the soda category.

[http://world.openfoodfacts.org/cgi/search.pl?action=process&...](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/cgi/search.pl?action=process&tagtype_0=categories&tag_contains_0=contains&tag_0=soda&sort_by=unique_scans_n&page_size=20&axis_x=sugars&axis_y=energy&graph=1)

<comment><USER16> That's a mistake. It's 77g sugar for 20 fl oz (which is a lot more than 100 ml) [http://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/01213104](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/01213104)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I was interested and then surprised on visiting the site that there seemed to be quite a few listings. However, most of what I clicked on had no nutritional information (a few lines of "?" instead). I would be much more likely to add information if I could easily see either a list or table of products which have been added (i.e. name and a picture) but have no/missing data. Also as rpedela has mentioned, an API would be helpful for adding and consuming the data.

<comment><AUTHOR> The API is there. As for the incomplete products, you can drill them down by status if you want to help complete them. You can pick and choose from [http://world.openfoodfacts.org/states](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/states)

For instance, here are the US products with photos selected, but still in need of nutrition info: [http://us.openfoodfacts.org/state/photos- validated/state/nut...](http://us.openfoodfacts.org/state/photos- validated/state/nutrition-facts-to-be-completed)

<comment><USER18> The API seems extremely limited. It seems you can find product info based on barcode or something, but there doesn't seem any way to submit products using an API. Of course with scraping one could "fake" and API, but that kind of sucks ...

<comment><AUTHOR> For now, you have a write API being built at [http://world.openfoodfacts.org/data](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/data) and [http://en.wiki.openfoodfacts.org/Project:API](http://en.wiki.openfoodfacts.org/Project:API) If you'd like to use the API to contribute or help improve it, send a mail to contact at openfoodfacts dot org.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> First: looks great, well done.

The problem with other food databases I've seen is the amount of duplicate or incorrect information. Are y'all actively taking steps to curtail this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes: so far we have a revision history for each product, and a revert system, we use the photos to ensure accuracy of data and we rely on the Barcode to limit duplication. If you're interested in helping on quality, please send me your email to pierre at openfoodfacts dot org so that I can invite you to our Slack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm dreaming of a "GPL" food movement, where the process of making the food in question can be inspected by anyone at any time, and where the ingredients and sub-ingredients that went into it are also recursively "open source". There would be a Sourceforge/GitHub/YouTube site where you could upload and view videos of those inspections and leave comments.

Then you could even have a 100% "open source" product label when all the ingredients and sub-ingredients you used were also "open source".

You may ask: why would anyone other than paid food inspectors be interested in checking out those places? For one, it can be very educative to take your kids to show them how things are made. If you have allergies you may be interested in double-checking claims. It could also be an alternative fun thing for people into geocaching, for example to help "complete" the "100% open source" label for a given product.

You may also ask: why would anybody in the food industry be interested in making their food open source? Why would they want to give up their trade secrets? Well, for one not every product has to be mysterious: e.g., bread is bread, you just want to know if any suspicious additive has been used, and if your bread is good you want people to know it. It can be a marketing tool. You could prove that your product is 100% organic/local/kosher/gluten-free/peanut- free, etc., because all of the sub-ingredients have been verified to be the same as well, and you've crowd-sourced the work of verifying this.

Thoughts?

<comment><USER21> A detailed list with the exact amount of all ingredients and the original recipe (with all technical details) that was used to produce the food.

That would be a big step in the right direction, similar to the open source free software movement.

All food treatments should be more regulated and some marketing terms banned. There is already a common misuse of terms like e.g. "gluten-free" to market even products that cannot contain gluten in anyway - it's just a PR vehicle on purpose. Processing milk products to remove lactose just to broaden the market value of products should be evaluated by the government and natural un- processed products favored.

<comment><USER22> > and natural un-processed products favored.

Should they be favored automatically, or only if there's evidence that the un- processed foods are actually better?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Another alternative: [http://fddb.info/db/en/index.html](http://fddb.info/db/en/index.html)

<comment><USER24> Says they have 1,000 products... seems quite small in comparison.

<comment><USER25> Should've linked to the original German site (just fddb.info), which has 233,000.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Neat! I was thinking about an optimal design for a similar idea just the other day. Motivated by the lack of accountability by food producer/manufacturers - and lack of a venue for consumers to voice concerns.

This was a direct result of a jar of honey I had qualms about (and probably an aggregate of other concerns & thoughts that we all build up over time on topics like this).

I wrote the producer an email, but would much prefer voicing my opinion public - seems that would be a far more effective way to get the issue resolved.

Anyway, I gave it a go with this Open Food Facts site. Here's the product I added:

[http://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/5220400060/raw- organi...](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/5220400060/raw-organic- honey-honey-bunny)

My first impression is that the interface is a tad cluttered.

Secondly, some of the categorization fields on the Add Product page are redundant.

Last & most importantly: my most desired use-case for this application is not actually accommodated for.

In addition to the detailed product info, which the site does a nice job of allowing me to enter, I want to be able to leave feedback about the product itself.

For example, with this particular jar of honey my main gripe was the film/plastic foil residue left on the outer rim of the jar when you first open it up. It's great that this product is in a glass jar, is 100% raw and organic - but when little chunks of plastic foil end up in my honey it totally invalidates those benefits.

Anyway, the feedback feature could be as simple as a comment thread below the page. And perhaps thinking a bit father out, ideally: an Amazon style review system.

Either way - love the progress so far, props for a great app already.

</comment><comment><USER27> This looks like a great free alternative to Nutritionix and/or MyFitnessPal. I've never been approved for a MFP API account. I'm definitely going to be checking this out!

So many places charge outrageous sums for this data, especially if you have UPCs. I didn't see UPCs anywhere on the site- any plans to track those as well?

<comment><USER28> Totally agree that most company charge a fortune for using the data that their customer entered for them :) ... I guess if you have a free app you should know that you are the product. And yes MFP doesn't allow access to their API except if you are an already established company with thousand of users, again it make sense given their business model. OFF has UPC has well, if you download the app you can scan a product and if it doesn't match the database you can add the information and attach the pictures of ingredients and nutritional info.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Really nice - especially seeing as a lot of things I'd actually find in a supermarket are there.

Is there any way to get a database dump of some sort? I managed to find a Open Food Facts API on Github, but I'd imagine it might be better to be able to export data so I'm not chewing up resources on Open Food Facts' server.

<comment><USER30> I found it here : [http://world.openfoodfacts.org/data](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/data)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> A wiki for food nutrition info, nice work and good to see there's already considerable community support.

One odd thing I noticed while at first browsing with Javascript disabled is clicking the site logo in the top left opens a file upload dialog. Not sure exactly what purpose using an input element for the logo is.

</comment><comment><USER32> As the comments point out, apart from immediate use to consumers, it can also help understand underlying temporal trends and perhaps with some data analysis suggest healthier substitutes based on user tastes.

However, as part of a course project in using Convolutional nets for image recognition, I was wondering, what if, we could simply take a picture of a rack in a grocery store and augment the image with the overall "healthiness" heatmap.

And now to the meat of the problem, data. Is there a readily available dataset on which the image recognition can be trained? Note that each product will need to have a images taken from a variety of angles and lighting conditions. There exist methods to automatically generate alternate sets of images, but they are not perfect and we would still need data.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, we have a tagged dataset, and image recognition would just be awesome. Can you send a mail to email@example.com so that I can invite you to the OpenFoodFacts slack, so that we can discuss it further ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Something else that would be quite useful is to include links to the international names of each product so that you can compare their ingredients.

For example, Kellogg's Frosted Flakes [1][2] are called Frosties in the UK, France [3] and some parts of Europe, but do not have identical ingredients.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frosted_Flakes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frosted_Flakes)

[2] [http://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/038000219634/frosted-...](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/038000219634/frosted- flakes-kellogg-s)

[3] [http://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/5053827104081/frostie...](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/5053827104081/frosties- kellogg-s)

</comment><comment><USER34> Hi teolemon, if you're still following:

Please consider allowing multiple barcodes for an individual product. I live in the USA, where (because of tradition and archaic technology) some grocers don't like to market products bearing only EAN barcodes. So, many imported items have both UPC and EAN barcode.

I hit a different case today: a box of 20 pieces with one barcode, but the individual item inside has a different barcode.

Maybe the functionality is already there, but I couldn't figure out how to do this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you send a mail to firstname.lastname@example.com so that I can invite you to the OpenFoodFacts slack. Barcodes are indeed a tedious issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is fantastic.

One "future vision" if I may -- actually tracking, sharing, recommending, etc. nutrition research. I think one of the most painful things for everyone interested in nutrition is actually knowing what the research says about what they need to eat, when, how, etc.

"Future vision squared" would be to personalize nutrition recommendations / advice to each person, but I'm dreaming.

<comment><USER28> for nutrition research I think [http://examine.com](http://examine.com) is a pretty good resource

<comment><USER36> That's us! Thanks for the kind words :)

<comment><USER37> Hello SoloX5. Open Food Facts contributor here. I absolutely love examine.com. Would any of your data be reusable under some open license or is it a strictly proprietary database?

<comment><USER36> Honestly - we've been meaning to release an API once we get our new backend out. Of course that's been the hiccup - it's been _almost_ ready for far too long :)

Ping me via www.examine.com/contact/ and lets see if we can make it happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I love this idea.

One question, do you have any mechanism for verifying the data is correct? I see that the submitter can upload a picture of the nutrition data that is on the food packaging, but if that food is not packaged in a can, but fresh food, how can the data be verified?

Hope that this takes off.

My family is using lactose free and gluten free products, and accurate information is hard to come by.

</comment><comment><USER39> Made a "quick" graph of which brands have the most carbohydrates (for food products that aren't just sugar).

Kind of neat, but I've never heard of a lot of the brands. (Most of the data is from France, turns out.)

[http://i.imgur.com/i3gOQS3.png](http://i.imgur.com/i3gOQS3.png)

<comment><USER39> Also sort of interesting to see the date that the data was added: [http://i.imgur.com/Te60ErW.png](http://i.imgur.com/Te60ErW.png)

Day of the week the data was added: [http://i.imgur.com/XqebDJM.png](http://i.imgur.com/XqebDJM.png)

Most Alcoholic brands: [http://i.imgur.com/a1u6iNM.png](http://i.imgur.com/a1u6iNM.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Love the concept. Tried adding products with the Android app- it would be good to add more details than just the name and pictures (on the app that is)

Also encountered a bug for a new product ingredient. The unfortunate part is that it lost all the data that I had entered till then.

Looking forward to contributing.

</comment><comment><USER40> Thanks for creating this. I use the USDA nutrition database in my cookingspace.com web portal. I am interested in all things food (work in a community garden, maintain a 100 year old irrigation ditch for a historic farm, and cooking is a major hobby). Thanks again.

</comment><comment><USER41> Interesting. Is there an API or download link? I am having trouble finding one if there is.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it's downloadable here as RDF and CSV, as a JSON API (read and write if you want to contribute): [http://world.openfoodfacts.org/data](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/data)

There are also mobile apps for iOS, Android and Windows Phone to contribute to the base on the go, or check a product.

<comment><USER39> Is the data available for download in English? I can only find it in French?

<comment><USER41> The CSV file appears to mix English and French.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I couldn't find anything but this type of information would be great with an API.

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://world.openfoodfacts.org/data](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/data) and [http://en.wiki.openfoodfacts.org/Project:API](http://en.wiki.openfoodfacts.org/Project:API)

email@example.com if you have any questions

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Nice! I want to know how much of each ingredient is in the food. I want the tool to automatically collect the nutritients and vitamins and other components from ingredients and subingredients, and sub-sub-ingredients, etc.

(Sorry for brevity)

</comment><comment><USER21> I like the idea of a free database and the implementation.

I had used www.codecheck.info before, it's a similar database with a community. It started as a university project, though the community content is now owned by a company.

</comment><comment><USER44> I don't get why there is a East-Germany option in the left sidebar select.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a bug, thanks for spotting it. I'd be very interested to see what kind of food products were available in East Germany though!

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Wow, bananas are really scary:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose)

</comment><comment><USER46> Geez. I was looking for a "free food products" database and was disappointed to find a "free, food products db" :/

<comment><AUTHOR> Open Food Facts is free as in speech as well as free as in Beer (The Open Food Facts database is available under the Open Database License. The individual contents of the database are available under the Database Contents License. Products images are available under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike licence).

But you're right, we still haven't got a Free as in Beer, Beers category :-P

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> It would be nice if this database can also include halal, kosher, or vegetarian/vegan status for the products.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have a system of labels (for halal, kosher, vegetarian/vegan) which you can see at: [http://en.wiki.openfoodfacts.org/Global_labels_taxonomy](http://en.wiki.openfoodfacts.org/Global_labels_taxonomy) We're also looking at religious certification authorities. We need help to improve on both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Is there a way to use this database to determine if a food product is suitable for vegetarians or vegans?

<comment><AUTHOR> You have all the labels available at [http://world.openfoodfacts.org/labels](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/labels) but you still should of course exercise caution and read the packaging.

[http://world.openfoodfacts.org/label/vegan](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/label/vegan) [http://world.openfoodfacts.org/label/vegetarian](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/label/vegetarian)

Power tip: you can actually look for several criterias: eg: [http://world.openfoodfacts.org/label/vegetarian/label/organi...](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/label/vegetarian/label/organic) or [http://world.openfoodfacts.org/label/vegetarian/category/puf...](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/label/vegetarian/category/puffed- cereal-cakes)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> MMh do they track the density to enable conversion between spoon and gram and vice versa ?

</comment><comment><USER50> I wonder if they have imported a bunch of Freebase items, now that its shutting down.

</comment><comment><USER51> Someone is going to write a Scrappy Project for this site soon..

<comment><AUTHOR> no need to :-) [http://world.openfoodfacts.org/data](http://world.openfoodfacts.org/data)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is there price information as well?

<comment><AUTHOR> Price would be quite difficult to track, but I guess an app using Open Food Facts data could do it using crowdsourcing :-)

<comment><USER24> Apps track gas prices quite easily...

<comment><USER3> True. But there are only a few different types of gas, and in the US alone, there are 50000 new food products introduced on supermarket shelves every year: [http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/FoodMarketingSystem/new_pro...](http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/FoodMarketingSystem/new_product.htm) And there are also many more places that sell food than gas (proof is that places that sell gas almost always sell food too). But with enough motivated individuals, anything is possible, price tracking included.

<comment><USER52> It is definitely doable. You don't need 100% coverage to be useful. A French company could do it (prixing.fr) although they don't currently. They allow you to scan a product barcode in your supermarket and compare it to their database to see if there is a cheaper alternative elsewhere. As baseline for their DB they scrap supermaket's online store and then complete/correct with what people scan with their mobile. Works really well in France because the market is somewhat concentrated an most of them have an online store.

Given that, they could probably track prices over time. I guess they probably do it internally and sale it on B2B basis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Not "open" but a much better resource, at least for now: [http://nutritiondata.self.com/](http://nutritiondata.self.com/)

Maybe these guys can catch up.</comment>


Pic A Fight for Android - <AUTHOR> http://www.picafight.com/android

<comment><USER2> Is this spam or some kind of self-referential "web 2.0" thing? I have no idea what it does.

<comment><USER3> Related commentary: <http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=2289081>

<comment><USER2> Thank you. For anyone equally bewildered, this is a popularity contest between images submitted from an iOS-only photo hosting service.</comment></comment></comment>


I'm still not using GUIs in 2019: A guide to the terminal - <AUTHOR> https://lucasfcosta.com/2019/02/10/terminal-guide-2019.html <comment><USER2> Discussion is currently still open at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19270527](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19270527) .

</comment><comment><USER3> Way too many configs, too many dependencies, too much fiddling around for my taste. I work on a lot of different servers and nowadays prefer no plugins, none to absolute minimal configs, and defaults everywhere.

Unless it's a first-class, integral part of the experience (like VS Code), I don't even bother with any visual adjustments. It just adds cognitive dependencies and would only be there to satisfy some arbitrary aesthetic sensitivity. That's no good when things in the wild are rough and dirty. I don't want to be conditioned to some fragile setup of plugins upon plugins upon minute adjustments that only works perfectly in some certain pristine environment.

I enjoy having zero friction when moving around computers. I enjoy getting things done anywhere without anything ever getting in my way. It's very liberating.

<comment><USER4> That reminds me of myself. I remember when I moved from screen to tmux and the default "master" key changed from ^A to ^B. All the time lost changing it back to ^A in .tmux.conf. In the end I simply got used to ^B and that's what I have.

I've gone as far as to open bug tickets for open source projects arguing that the defaults should be changed so I don't have to configure as much software when I move to another computer :D

<comment><USER5> The problem I have with ^B is that the b is too far away from ctrl. A is much closer, which makes it a much faster one-hand press.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Const-me I use terminals but I generally prefer GUI.

> In Unix, one tries to design programs to operate not specifically with each > other, but with programs as yet unthought of.

That's what Microsoft did with Word, Excel and most parts of Windows. They all expose very large API surface allowing them to be controlled by other programs, or embedded into other programs. No intimate knowledge is required, both human-readable documentation and machine-readable type info are available.

> but the more you get used to plain-text, the easier it becomes to type > commands rather than to search for options or buttons.

Well designed GUI programs use both mouse and keyboard. Users willing to invest their time getting used to a particular program aren't searching, they are using keyboard shortcuts. The upside is users not willing to invest time can still use program, slowly but surely.

> The first is that all this abstraction makes people utterly unaware of what > the computer is doing.

Even if you know which processes are compiling and linking your code, how they're launched and how they exchange data, you're still unaware what the computer is doing. There's an OS underneath all that, managing memory and scheduling threads. Underneath there're drivers and multiple stacks of hardware, high-level stuff like USB and PCIe on top of other things eventually on top of NAND. There's quantum physics underneath.

Thinking about all that might be interesting, but useless with regards to getting things done. To get things done, you have to stop somewhere. Stopping at IDE level is not that bad. If it's a good IDE and suitable language, the abstraction might be almost watertight.

Since the OP talks about programming, here're some GUI-related features I like a lot. (1) Wavy red lines under spelling errors. (2) Built-in image viewer (3) GUI-based debugging tools, i.e. live element picker, live property inspector (4) Profiler: data collection doesn't need GUI, visualization does, to view these graphs and dynamically adjust what's on them.

<comment><USER6> I don't understand why going to an option in a GUI counts as 'searching' but setting a text option in a terminal, which I'll have to look up in a manual as I'm not going to guess it am I, doesn't count as 'searching.'

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Another of those articles assuming a program with a GUI can't have keyboard shortcuts, configuration stored in human readable config files or composition with other external programs...

> An IDE limits you to the extent of what their creators envisioned you would > want to do.

10000+ VSCode plugins disagree with you [https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/vscode](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/vscode)

> Being comfortable in a terminal means speaking the same language as the > machine does.

No, the terminal and all the programs you start in it usually run on the same abstraction level as a GUI.

> Configuration for terminal programs is also extremely portable

And GUI application configurations are inherently not?? VSCode config is stored in a single json file?

> Dotfiles are human readable and contain plain-text. They also become much > less coupled with your projects than IDE configurations would be. When you > use an IDE configuration file to describe how the computer should build your > code you enforce everyone in your team to use the same tool.

Another invalid assumption that an IDE specific config file is not human readable, so let's replace it with a vim specific config file instead! (because vim is not an IDE?) Anyway, best practice nowadays is for IDEs to simply open the standard build-description file out of the box, eg CMakeList.txt or build.gradle.

> Finally, being proficient with a terminal is a "learn-once-use-everywhere"

Hold on a minute, i just have to copy all my vim-config files, plugins, bashrc-files and workarounds for even basic functionality such as copy-paste in tmux to work? Also good luck using PowerShell or cmd on Windows if you are a die hard linux user. VSCode, Sublime and IntelliJ behaves much more alike across Win/Linux/Mac than respective terminals. While true that being productive on a remote ssh shell is an important skill it has very little to do with what the article describes.

</comment><comment><USER8> I have yet to find a terminal application that can replicate the contextual awareness and refactoring abilities of the Jetbrains family.

Sorry, but I don't think I'm ready to switch to using solely the terminal.

<comment><USER9> They incorporate a pretty decent vim emulator as well.

When I've watched people use terminals on Twitch it feels there's big periods of times spent swapping around everywhere and a whole lot of mucking around. Watching people coding real things and dealing with the various normal problems is a pretty good test of an environment, I've never seen anyone do it in compelling way where I didn't think it would be faster in an IDE. That doesn't mean it can't be done, I just haven't seen it and I've been coding for decades and have a bit of an addiction to watching people code online!

There are, however, many times where it's better to go into a terminal rather than try and get things done within the IDE, but most IDEs offer the terminal as part of the experience.

The only downfall of some IDEs is they have little corners of the IDE where driving them through the keyboard isn't the best experience or not fully implemented.

<comment><USER10> The way I do it in vim is to have one terminal window with vim open, and one terminal with a couple of tabs for git, compiling, and flashing for embedded stuff or server for web stuff.

The important part in vim is for me to start it by opening ALL the files in my project directory and then just have two side by side windows. I never muck around with the file viewer or creating new windows. So other than the commands you expect from general text editing, searching, and swapping buffers (fuzzy search plus ctags makes this comparable to the ide's I've seen) the only vim commands I use are... Focus window right, focus window left, and save.

I used to waste time mucking about as you say until I saw Casey Muratori coding for handmade hero in emacs with pretty much the same setup. He takes it a step further by not even having separate buffers, he just seems to put all his code in one big file.

<comment><USER9> I'm assuming you mean [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbmV1bnQ-i0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbmV1bnQ-i0) ? If he's putting code into one file because it is easier to manage while using terminal based editing, that doesn't make a good case for using those tools.

I've seen similar demos of peoples "enviroment", but they are all demos, not actually doing real dev.

I did see [https://www.twitch.tv/curlhacker](https://www.twitch.tv/curlhacker) ( guy who made curl ) and he worked on real issues, he worked pretty well, but I didn't see that it was any better than using an IDE...sometimes it seemed more awkward Unfortunately his coding videos have been deleted, there is one still image which shows his multi terminal setup

What I like seeing is, project setup, debugging, acquiring packages, API discovery, refactoring, unit testing, navigating code / multi file management, git management, etc. Seeing developers struggle with the natural frictions that occur is much more interesting I find.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> All this points are good but I tend not to invest too much overhead time in my work programs.

\- tmux (easy)

\- iterm (easy)

Using zsh, no. Too much bloat and configuration for me. Fish shell (plus something like Fisherman) is from the start much easier to (pre-)configure. The same with neovim. Nothing against it but I started my career with Notepad++, Ultraedit going to Sublimetext (in between some IntelliJ) and nowadays vscode which again is with less configuration a really productive tool. I never had too much time to spare to invest into a new editor concept and I also disagree with vim keybindings for daily work (python and web developer mostly). The terminal is nice but not the only productive solution.

<comment><USER12> I think anyone that says there is "one true way" to be productive is probably selling something (or they're suffering from some kind of sunk cost fallacy).

If you have something that works for you then that's great, personally I see the appeal of intellij IDEs (I'm a very light user of PyCharm)- but most of the time I end up in the terminal.

My personal belief is that terminal programs have a much higher learning curve in the beginning but can be much more powerful in the mid to long term, and the constraints of not using graphical elements or being able to place anything anywhere actually leads to a more cut down and consistent experience.

I'd be using Mutt if it weren't for the extreme prolificaction of html in emails.

But yes, YMMV and I dont think we have to be zealots about how we work unless you put constraints on other people for working much different. (For instance if I tried to force everyone to send text-only emails)

<comment><USER13> I still use Mutt, combined with offlineimap (due to exchange mail server), w3m for for converting mails from HTML, using markdown to write email, and pandoc to format back to HTML... Works like a charm!

Did not find any other mail client (although tried mailspring etc) with such powerfull customizations, nothing even close to Mutt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't really get the way terminal usage gets framed as outdated, or GUIs as unnecessary depending on one's preference.

They're each for very separate use cases - tasks that are easier done in a terminal belong in a terminal and those that are easier in a windowed idiom belong there.

<comment><USER15> I fully agree. There is a place for both. Even though I use TikZ every once in a while, if I need to draw some graphs really quickly, nothing beats a GUI program like OmniGraffle. Or if you need to touch up a photo, you could spend a lot of time tinkering with Imagemagick, but it's much easier to just fire up Lightroom or Pixelmator.

Even for editing, I sometimes prefer GUIs. E.g. X11/Cocoa emacs can render LaTeX equations inline in AUCTeX or org-mode. This is sometimes very convenient for quickly verifying whether equations are correct during writing. Similarly, with org-mode, you can show R or gnuplot graphs inline.

On the other hand, when you are automating a build, doing some custom data extraction, configuring a server, etc. nothing beats the command-line.

A skilled person knows what to use when.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting read. I do find it ironic though that the author starts out by dismissing Vim plugins as bloat (praising vanilla config), praises the need to never stick stuff in a config file you don't underhand, and the goes onto inatalling oh-my-zsh. That makes no sense.

<comment><USER17> Agreed. Getting rid of oh-my-zsh had been one of the best decision in my life within terminal. Over years I must have gained hours and days of cumulative productive time from this single decision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This posts pretty much outlines all the things that I do as well. It is true that in going this route there needs to be a time investment at first (and some fiddleing throughout) but once you're set, there is no need to jump on to the next hot editor and learn new keybindings.

Where I disagree is the notion that a dev environment based on the terminal beats an IDE. If you are using a language with a huge (type-sensitive) API or a complicated framework, nothing beats an IDE for its auto-completion. Especially if you don't have a black belt in that language/framework yet. You can use ctags and auto-completion plugins but nothing beats the code- introspection developed for IDEs.

If you don't code against complicated APIs, there is nothing that beats long- term productivity with a deep understanding of the terminal and an editor that is with you for many years.

Even if an IDE is the better choice for day to day work, it is beneficial to be comfortable in the terminal. I sometimes find it hard to believe how uncomfortable coworkers are when they have to do some work on a remote server and what length they go through not to use the terminal.

</comment><comment><USER19> Ncurses is just a crappy GUI toolkit.

For local work, vast majority of the benefits of using ncurses based applications over X11 ones are cultural and not technical. In similar vein using terminal vim over gvim, or using tmux over just tiling wm does not really gain you much.

</comment><comment><USER20> >duck-duck-go it

DuckDuckGo is my primary search engine, and I like this. If I said this, most of my friends would go 'Huh?' \- good way to spread awareness. Even if it's more awkward to say than 'google it'.

<comment><USER21> Three syllables versus two. This must be one of the reasons Microsoft went with Bing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Could anyone recommend a good "terminal/shel guide" for people not familiar with the shell and gnu tools at all? Like ls, cp, less, find, grep etc and why is it all needed? (not for myself; for some friends who are learning coding on macs)

<comment><USER23> This is an excellent start once you get over the mage conceit:

[http://unixmages.com/wp- content/uploads/2018/12/ufbm.pdf](http://unixmages.com/wp- content/uploads/2018/12/ufbm.pdf)

<comment><USER22> Thanks a million, never seen this one, looks quite awesome!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> When I was working in a large codebase (hundreds of thousands of lines) then I needed an IDE just to be productive.

No I work on way smaller programs (hundreds of lines), and vim is totally sufficient.

Different tools for different jobs ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

</comment><comment><USER25> With emacs I can run eslint from the terminal, also other things like gcc debugging you get the advantages of an ide's interactivity without needing a gui to run it.

</comment><comment><USER26> "but the more you get used to plain-text, the easier it becomes to type commands rather than to search for options or buttons. The hard part is to remember which commands to type."

And this is where terminals suck and IDE's are strong. Integrated autocomplete and documentation. I do not need to remember every function or parameter, but I can directly look them up, while I type. Is there something like this for terminals? I have not seen it, yet ... so, to put it in a picture:

[https://xkcd.com/1168/](https://xkcd.com/1168/)

But yes there is man and --help, but it is not really straightforward and fast, like a modern IDE. And usually I never find in time in --help what I am looking for, so am faster with googling anyway.

<comment><USER27> There is a whole bunch of shells with all kinds of autocomplete. Terminal editors like vim have plugins for autocomplete and integrated documentation. CLI programs typically have -h or --help.

The whole "Terminal vs. IDE" argument is kinda weird. You can have an IDE in a terminal. This whole thing is about CLI/TUI vs. GUI, not terminal vs. IDE.

<comment><USER26> "this whole thing is about CLI/TUI vs. GUI, not terminal vs. IDE. "

Good point.

But can you recommend a vim setup with plugins? It has been a while since I tried it, and it was not to my liking, but I was more GUI adopted at that time.

<comment><USER27> I'm the wrong guy to ask, I kinda dislike IDEs. I use vscode sometimes, exactly for the code completion and integrated documentation you mentioned. But I often use vim for the lack of that. Every helper can also be a distraction, every functionality is an interface you have to learn.

Right now, I only have formatters (which also work as syntax checkers).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Describe the perfect side project - <AUTHOR> I was hoping to open up a discussion about side projects.  Is learning a new technology more important. or earning a side income? How much do you typically invest in your side project? Time only? 1k, 5k more? <comment><USER2> I only really care about the tech-stack of a side project if it's an open- source thing or purely an educational project for myself. If I'm doing it for profit, I'll build it quick and dirty in whatever technology lets me move the quickest.

For for-profit projects I usually give them a time-limit and a hard budget. For example: I'll put a max of 40 hours and $2,000 into project XYZ. If I hit either limit without turning a profit (or at least seeing some return on my investment), I'll move on to the next thing.

I've found that the trick to side projects is to keep moving until you find one with product-market-fit. Don't let yourself get bogged down trying to make a mediocre idea into a real business. In my experience, when you hit something good, the market will let you know immediately, so just keep testing ideas into you strike oil.

<comment> J-dawg This seems like great advice. Out of curiosity, what's your 'quick and dirty' tech stack? Has an educational project ever turned into a for-profit one, or is it always clear from the start?

<comment><USER2> My quick-and-dirty stack is usually LAMP. LAMP allows me to work quickly, but, that doesn't make it dirty.

What makes it dirty is the fact that for a small MVP I won't write any tests at all, I won't bother to build a real API or micro-services or a fancy single-page-app client. I'll just build a simple monolithic MVC in an out-of- the-box framework. I won't worry about scalability, in fact I'll make choices that I know won't scale at all. It's all about cranking out code as quickly as possible. Yeah it ends up being ugly spagetti, but 99% of the time, nobody will ever see it, and I'll throw it away soon after. (If the project does get traction though, I'll start over and build it from scratch the right way).

And no, for me, educational projects are usually open-source (i'll join a project or start one of my own if I want to get more experience in a certain area). So those projects are more likely to be libraries or utilities or helper-classes, not fully fledged businesses. So it's unlikely they'd ever even be monetizable.

<comment><USER3> What about the design? The user interface is important obviously, do you know design 'well enough' to make a passable interface or do you work with a designer?

<comment><USER2> I'll usually just copy an established/popular design for the MVP (this doesn't take any appreciable skills on my part), and if the product gets traction I'll bring in a real designer to rethink everything from scratch.

Also, there are quite a few themes/skins/ui-kits for bootstrap and other front-end frameworks, that are worth taking a look at if you don't have a designer to work with. They won't compare to having a real designer on your team, but they're better than nothing... you can get something passable up and running that isn't embarrassingly ugly.

But, this only applies if you're building products whose primary value proposition (and product market fit) has little to do with the design (think Craigslist).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The best side project is one where the potential upsides are big, and there are no potential downsides.

Realistically, this means you should choose to work on something that you actually want to use yourself and you should build it using technology you want to learn for career advancement. As for monetization, don't count on this, but if you have several options in terms of side project that are roughly comparable in terms of personal interest/professional development, it would be prudent to choose the one that has the best chance to turn a profit.

</comment><comment><USER5> In my side projects, I am influenced by a book I read few years ago: The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau. I only do projects that have potential to bring revenue. I use the following milestones to decide whether to keep project alive or not. Once a project is cash flow positive (ramen profit), I only reinvest cash flow.

      $100 + time before project goes live
      $250 + time after launch and until revenue generation
      $1,000 + time after revenue starts coming and until cash flow positive

<comment><USER6> Can I ask you where do you look for potential project ideas?

<comment><USER5> Most of the projects are scratching my own itch. I don't intentionally look for project ideas. Why didn't I think of that. I wish I could do this. This could also be applied to this (something unrelated). These type of thoughts and questions typically trigger the potential project ideas. If unconsciously I keep focusing/thinking more about them for a while, I know I am on to something worth further investigating.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I will often experiment with new technologies while working on a side project. For example, right now I have an active side project that is a mobile app with a (geo)Django backend.

A couple months ago I became aware of PostgREST. It's an interesting project and aspects of it appeal to me. But it's still worng.

So I thought "why not do something like that, but in Common Lisp". I messed around with it for a few weeks and proved to myself that I can in fact, build a better mousetrap. Spent a couple more weeks toying around with writing a new postgres client library to support it.

And finally, last weekend I returned to Django. When I've got the iPhone and Andriod stuff working and have it all deployed -- I'll go back to the Lisp stuff and reimplement the backend.

For me, a side project is an opportunity to build something while allowing myself to run off on little tangents. I can't justify doing that when working for somebody else.

But on a side project nobody even knows I'm working on... Might as well might as well.

</comment><comment><USER8> I always have at least one side project going, but I have zero ability at discovering profitable business ideas so they're always just for fun. Therefore learning/technology is the most important thing - so for example even if the project uses Django (my daily driver) I'll throw in a new JS framework on the front end.

</comment><comment><USER9> I use side projects for R&D and fun. All I invest is time and domain names and effort.

I also like them as ways to collaborate with friends and strangers.

Right now I'm working on a CI tool, a browser testing tool, a web app for collaborating on song chord sheets, and a new kind of real time database.

The chord app is for my band, and some friends are helping. It might become useful for other people.

The CI and test tools are infrastructure that I'll use for other projects.

The database is a stepping stone for a long term project...

</comment><comment><USER10> The only side projects I've started, finished and continued to develop|maintain are project I made for myself out of some form of need. On the bonus side they all make some money as well - although I probably would have made them regardless.</comment>


Show HN: Minaterm an SSH Client Implemented in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://www.minaterm.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> If you just want get an idea of how it works, try the "Eliza" example. That connects, via an ssh client implemented in the browser, to the hosting server.

</comment><comment><USER2> The idea of SSHing anywhere from a page containing third-party JavaScript (the Google ad) is terrifying, to say the least.

<comment><AUTHOR> Then don't use it. :)

Seriously though, this is largely a techdemo. But I can see situations where it might be fun, like making nethack sessions available over the web.

As a local installation I would suggest it's somewhat more secure than things like shellinabox.

But yes, it's obviously inadvisable to use it to connect to your own servers.

In some ways though, I find it interesting to consider why we feel it's less secure than a desktop ssh client. In particular, less secure than something like putty. With sufficient auditing, and some minor technical changes, I feel like the security issues could be made similar.</comment></comment>


Tesla driver banned for M1 autopilot seat-switch - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-43934504 <comment><USER2> The unlucky one who got caught? I can't really imagine there being more than one or two people with a Tesla with enough screws loose to actually attempt this..

<comment><USER3> Have you heard the expression "hold my beer and watch this"

People do really stupid stuff all the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16948003](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16948003)

<comment><USER5> True, but this article is the original source, and the previously submitted one had a few errors in it (as noted in the comments).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is why we cant have nice things.

<comment><USER7> Where "this" in {idiots driving, idiots marketing lane assistance as autonomous driving}. Don't worry, the SDV Therac moment is still ahead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Seems appropriate since he doesn't like to drive anyway.</comment>


Adjusting the Taps on Oil Price - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/01/daily-chart-6 <comment><USER2> OT: I researched the savings to American pockets. Going from $4/gallon -> $2/gallon saves American $500 Billion annually. I included the savings from the cost of food as well (food cost had a direct correlation to oil prices).

How much of that is going to be pumped back into the economy is unknown, but the amount is sizable. You would also expect, some amount of savings globally on food and fuel. So net, this might give the global economy a bit of a boost.

OT OT: It also surprised me why Obama administration never, framed the Iran Nuclear Deal as a $2/gallon or $1/gallon victory for American people. It would have been more sticky.

<comment><USER3> Things have changed. A lot of states' new and old oil industry experiences a contraction at prices that low.

Alaskan residents used to get cut a check, but that might be going away due to budget shortfalls. Then you have plenty of lost jobs in the shale states.

It also should not be the responsibility of politicians to promise cheap gasoline. It might be a quick political victory when it's easy to promise, but it leads to bad policies when it gets complicated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Saudi-Arabia and others fund their regime and frankly, standard of living, primarily through oil profits, in the same way that Google finances self- driving cars R&D and other projects through ads.

So sure, they can profitably extract oil at $20 price point, but that doesn't pay for their state budget. They really need a price at $80+. Meanwhile, western producers don't care very much; if the price is high, they can export, if the price is low, that massively benefits their other industry while the oil part hibernates.

<comment><USER5> Tell that to Canadians that had their currency dropped like a stone. They need to feed their families while the prices of fresh food doubled

<comment><USER6> Fact check: ( source : [https://www.uoguelph.ca/foodinstitute/system/files/Food%20Pr...](https://www.uoguelph.ca/foodinstitute/system/files/Food%20Price%20Report%202016%20English.pdf) ) Food Price Report 2016 UNIVERSITY OF GUELPH ECONOMIC BRIEF 4 Prepared by the Food Institute of the University of Guelph 12/10/2015 _" In 2014,the Food Institute of the University of Guelph predicted that overall food prices in 2015 would rise by up to 3.0%. As stated in our revised report in February 2015, this prediction was based on a much stronger Canadian dollar versus the American currency. For 2015, overall food price inflationary patterns were consistent with our predictions. "_

I know you said "fresh food", but it is January. It would not be surprising that _some_ prices double around this time. I know that "fresh strawberries" are triple the price where I live.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's your work-life balance like? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Usually set my alarm for 8:20. Head off for work. Start around 9:15-10:00. Work until 17:00. Leave. Workout till 19:30, maybe 20:00. Head home, prepare something to eat. Read, Game, Work, do nothing. Go to bed anywhere from 10:30-1:00. Repeat.

Sometimes I get stressed and need to meditate. I use headspace and calm.

I'm usually tanked by the weekend and sleep super long and don't do a whole lot because I am so tired.

Repeat. x 52.

</comment><comment><USER3> Working from home, starting around 9:00 (some days might be fishing the local river before that) at 11:00 will exercise, lunch and nap to about 13:30, more work until 16:30. For vacation this summer going to Europe with the family for 1 months... All this is the reason I cannot retire (or change jobs)

</comment><comment><USER4> Wake up at 9am, go to sleep at 3am or 4 am.

Work from 10:50 to 2am then move around the city.

Work only if I feel like working, otherwise read articles, chit chat, networking and some promotion/marketing.

Can't complain.

<comment><USER5> You sound like me. But I'm not making a whole lotta money, and I'm afraid I'm going to have to take a real job soon. Then, party's over.

<comment><USER4> Haha, I just realize after taking a look at your commenting history that I've read most of your comments on the posts where you commented. I work in adtech, it's not a reputable industry but there are still low hanging fruits on which lifestyle business can be built.

<comment><USER5> Awesome, that's funny. I'm working on marketing stuff as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I work rotating shift work, totalling 25 days working per 35 calendar days, done as 3 7-day weeks and a 4-day week with weekends of varying lengths interspersed. I average 56-60 hours per calendar week, which works out to be approx 7x11hr in a 7 day work week.

On weekends I work out, cook, do laundry, and spend time with my wife if we're not on opposite sleep schedules.

</comment><comment><USER7> I work 35 hours a week. Going on vacation for two weeks, will not be working, because it's a vacation. Good for me, good for my employer: [https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/08/18/productive- programme...](https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/08/18/productive-programmer/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Wake up at 7:50am, work from 8:00am - 11:50am, go to the gym from 12:00 - 12:50, then continue work until 5:00p. Chill with the missus afterwork/play video games, go to bed at 10:30p.</comment>


New Macbook Pro power efficiency and time remaining - <AUTHOR> https://macdaddy.io/new-mbp-power-efficiency-impressive/ <comment><USER2> > Reducing mA (power draw) rather than increasing mAh (power storage) is the > most effective way to increase battery life, which would go a long way to > explain manufacturers' obsession with thinness (which, in electrical terms > often directly translates efficiency (i.e., smallness)) in their devices > rather than just giving us something that endures.

I think it goes the other way; the manufacturers' obsession with thinness (for mostly aesthetic reasons) goes a long way to explain why they're focusing on reducing power draw.

It's great that they are reducing power draw, but by making everything thinner (usually translating into decreased power storage), those gains in efficiency are largely cancelled out when it comes to battery life in real-world usage.

When creating these things, the designers, engineers, and marketing people obviously have some kind of target battery life in mind, and it seems as though the target is always "about the same battery life as the last generation," whereas there's no end to the number of compromises and engineering efforts that go toward cutting 1 mm off one dimension.

And of course, the tech bloggers all go nuts about how thin the newest generation is compared to the last, and people buy computers based on their recommendations.

Aren't these things thin enough already, at least for professionals? Why not go for some truly earth-shattering battery life on one of these laptops? Do people _really_ care more about that 1 mm than they do about potentially hours of additional battery life?

<comment><USER3> Then, irony of ironies, people put their ultra-thin devices in cases to protect them, carry multiple batteries for them, or external charging bricks, and my favorite... the oversized extended battery.

 _Throws hands up in air_

<comment><USER4> I can't speak for laptops but I can speak for the utility of having a thin phone and a battery pack that makes it thicker and heavier than it would be if Apple just included a bigger battery:

I've only used my battery pack four or five times in the year and a half I've had my 6s. Most of the time I'm not far away from a plug - either at home, in my car, at work, etc.

But when I travel, a slightly bigger battery wouldn't be enough. I would want twice the battery life - something I can get by using a battery pack - but I probably wouldn't get from a slightly larger iPhone.

If you have to optimize, why optimize for the edge cases instead of the most popular case and give options for those times people need it.

<comment><USER5> Now that the MacBook Pro has USB-C is there any reason Apple couldn't implement some type of fast-charging technology like you find in smartphones? The OnePlus 3/3T in particular are amazingly fast. [1][2]

Since getting my Pixel XL I have a noticed I rely on external battery packs less as I often have access to a power socket for at least an hour or two when I travel.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbELsT1hfnA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbELsT1hfnA)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0SU0Me4Fds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0SU0Me4Fds)

<comment><USER6> The new MacBook Pro charges very, very quickly, 10 to 80% in 20-30 minutes by my estimation.

I can count on running off the battery all day as long as I can get it plugged in while I fetch a sandwich for lunch.

<comment><USER7> Do you know if it will _slow_ charge from a low power usb power source?

If I plug mine into a 2 amp usb A charger it says that it is not charging, but does that mean it is drawing zero watts, or only that it is only drawing 10 watts? It would be nice to charge it overnight if only a phone charger happens to be around, or even just slow down the discharge rate while using the laptop.

<comment><USER8> It does slow charge, i use my external Anker Powercore Plus battery pack with it, while its not able to charge it while running because the MBP draws more Power than the Anker Battery can output it EXTENDS its battery lifetime very noticeably.

<comment><USER9> While that'd work, I'd advise against it as I feel like that'd needlessly heat the battery and reduce its life.

<comment><USER10> If that were true, wouldn't it be the job of the computer's battery management system to make sure it didn't happen?

Forcing user to learn all kinds of magic rules for how to "treat their battery" seems very old-fashioned and strange.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I love the new 2016 MBP, and after using it think most of the purported issues are BS.

That said, there is one very real issue that I haven't seen mentioned anywhere: because of how thin they are, many of the minor issues that could previously be fixed in the Apple Store now require sending it out.

I had an intermittently working key on my keyboard and took it in for something I assumed would take half an hour to fix. They told me they needed to mail it in and it would be 4 - 6 days, probably 4. It's now going on day 13.

Fortunately my last one was old enough that it had zero resale value, but for anyone thinking of upgrading I'd highly recommend keeping a backup.

<comment><USER12> Three fingers drag is buggy on the new trackpad.

Control strip is buggy, especially when using external monitors. The software is not able to adequately deal with external monitors being connected and disconnected throughout the day.

<comment><USER13> I've found this too - connecting an external monitor messes up some of my Touchbar functionality until I restart the whole laptop.

<comment><USER12> another solution is to run this command in terminal: killall ControlStrip

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> When I bring my 2016 MBP into the office, it runs out of battery near the end of the day, and I have to plug it in for those final 2 or 3 hours. Very satisfied.

My colleague with a new Surface Book has been shaking his fist at me, wishing he hadn't listened to the FUD and left the Applesphere. Apparently he gets frustratingly bad battery life on his SB. (To be fair, though, the SB's display ejection hardware _is_ just plain cool...)

We're programmers, BTW, writing server-side software mainly using Go, running several ancillary services locally on our dev machines using Docker to ease the development process. I'm thoroughly pleased with my 2016 MBP's battery life considering these workloads.

<comment><USER15> Seriously, why would battery life even matter if you are sitting in the office all day??

With that said, SB can easily do 10-12 hours once you turn off the always-on camera:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/3qxjrk/fix_battery...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/3qxjrk/fix_battery_life_on_surface_book/)

<comment><USER16> > Seriously, why would battery life even matter if you are sitting in the > office all day??

Do you people chain yourselves to your desk the entire day? My office has a the "open-office" trend, which pretty much prompts me to leave and to go various parts of the office during the day, or maybe even the library, and only come back in for meetings.

<comment><USER15> > My office has a the "open-office" trend, which pretty much prompts me to > leave and to go various parts of the office during the day, or maybe even > the library, and only come back in for meetings.

To me this sounds as you don't really have proper working offices. Maybe that is the problem you need to solve, instead of trying to maximize the battery life of your laptop?

<comment><USER16> I can change the battery life of my laptop by buying a different laptop.

I can't change my office layout without switching jobs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think a lot of people are talking about the new MBP as if they had one. It's 2017 and a too many power users still base their opinion simply on specs divination -- that is, theoretical musings about this and that component will perform. Especially with Apple, it should be clear that the whole thing is much more complicated than a 1+1 based on a spec list.

<comment><USER18> I think that's been clear to anyone without their head in the sand for a while now.

It's the same with iOS vs. Android. Early Android proponents did nothing but talk up the specs and the "customizability". The reality is, iPhones have always had such great hardware/software integration that they made using touch screens feel like you were interacting with the UI physically. You press a button, the phone almost immediately responded. A lot of this was the use of capacitive touch screen, but there was a lot more to it. It took years for Android to get close to this point, and I honestly think Apple still does it better.

Why do I need 4GB of RAM on my phone, when 1GB runs every app I want it to and gives me a lag free experience in the rest of the OS?

<comment><USER19> Don't even start....

This must be a troll

<comment><USER18> I'd love to hear a contrasting opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Based on my (admittedly unusual) workloads, the effective charge time of the 2016 is awful. I already only get 4-5 hours out of a 2014 MBP. I bought a 2016 and only managed 3 1/2 hours. Maybe they've improved that with some software fixes, but it's still a non starter. So I returned it.

I know I'm not a typical user, but I get much better battery life (with lower productivity) out of my windows laptop. Which was not the case when I switched to Macs years back.

<comment><USER21> Are you controlling for the screen having a higher maximum brightness?

I thought I was getting much worse battery life on my new MBP compared to my old one, but then I paid attention to screen brightness - when I level match the screens to the same level of brightness, I get the same battery life as my older one.

I'm used to just jamming the screen to 100% brightness, so I've had to get used to keep it around 70% or so.

<comment><USER22> Mac laptops these days are built with backlights strong enough to compete with daylight. In typical working conditions, 100% is way overkill.

For max long term comfort, your display should be no brighter than the ambient light levels. Otherwise--if the display is way brighter--your pupils will have to contract when you look at the screen, and dilate when you look away. Your pupils are controlled by muscles and like any muscles, they can get tired.

I have a 2012 MacBook Air and I rarely have the brightness over 50% indoors. And the new MacBook Pros have way brighter screens.

Sitting in my living room right now, my iPhone is at about 15% brightness.

<comment><USER6> In a dark room I find the minimum brightness much too bright. Weird feature to wish for, but I think they need to crank the minimum brightness down by at least 25%.

<comment><USER23> You can hold option-shift while adjusting the brightness (or volume) to get quarter increments. However it looks like it doesn't have any effect below the 1st level for brightness.

<comment><USER24> If you open System Preferences, it has a handy little brightness slider. Just Option-<brightness> opens the right pane.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Amazing news for someone who's about to pull the trigger on the non-touch bar 2016 MBP.

I considered many other options but couldn't find a company with similar build quality and reputation for high quality in the mobile workstation space.

My only concern was the battery, it seems to perform at a high level.

<comment><USER26> Do not mistake power efficiency for long battery life. Power efficiency doesn't mean all tasks use little power and you will always have a long battery life. Apple's power efficiency shines in idle mode. When you put light but constant strain on the machine, e.g. with IDEs and compile-on-save, battery life goes down quickly, no matter how efficient.

Choose wisely. A MacBook Pro (Mid 2014) still has roughly the same performance as a 2016 model but is much, much cheaper. I recommend you pick a used 2014 or 2015 model in good condition. Saves you a lot of money (> $1000).

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Everyone talks about the downsides of the new MacBooks. No one talks about about how they reduced the size of the internal battery by 30%, effectively added a second screen, improved overall performance, and still kept the same battery life.

<comment><USER28> Wait, all anyone has talked about is how they have done all that... with the exception of the "same" battery life.

A lot of people feel it ... isn't the same.

<comment><USER29> or... arguably kept the 'same' battery life as previous devices, but added more battery draining 'stuff'.

I had one, and returned it, partially for battery life. I'm doing a lot of development (intellij/phpstorm/virtualbox/etc). The battery life wasn't _bad_ \- at heavy use, I could get perhaps 6 hours of 'real' usage, but... It was $3700, which was a bit much for my blood given the battery shortcomings (and a few other reasons). But mostly price/performance relative to my workload. For $1200/less I got an approximately similar 2015 model with _more_ battery, and a slightly heavier weight.

<comment><USER30> I'd trade in a few ounces to get back user serviceable memory and hd/ssd upgrades.

<comment><USER29> agreed. the thinness was/is 'nice', but... would prefer hd swapping and memory mods.

if price went down based on thickness, maybe it would be more welcomed...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Have had one since November and this mirrors my experience. YMMV, but I find that the 2016 MBP charges quite a bit faster than the 2015. For me, I prefer the faster charging over the slight increase in overall battery life, with the added bonuses of the '16 using a standard charging cable. Anyone with a newer Android phone (and soon, airport shops and convenience stores nationwide) can hook you up with a spare MBP charger in a pinch. External USB-C batteries are also easily available and add as much portable charging capacity as you want to buy. Anyone serious about needing to travel with their laptop will probably find it easier to keep a '16 MBP charged than before.

</comment><comment><USER32> I have an older MBP. Hunting down processes and especially tabs in Safari or Chrome that cause the CPU to spike and to drain the batteries becomes a daily routine. A routine I don't like.

Is there a program that watches excessive CPU usage and battery drain over time, warns me and points me directly to the possible culprit and advices me to take action. For example to close a specific tab in Safari. I would even let the program automatically close Safari tabs for certain websites.

The goal would be to optimise battery usage in the most user friendly way.

<comment><USER33> for chrome, The Great Suspender does an alright job if you have a lot of sprawl and an internet connection stays available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I will attribute this to Intel's advances and focus in low power processors, not much credit goes to Apple in my mind.

The Macbook pro 2014 used Haswell processors which are notably more power hungry on idle than Broadwell and its successor Skylake, as Intel really focused on power draw with Broadwell.

</comment><comment><USER35> Why is it reasonable to make claims about the current draw going down without discussing voltage?

There are only two useful figures here: power drawn from the battery (probably mW) and time the battery would last at idle. The current is meaningless unless you know that the voltage (current voltage, not nominal voltage) of the batteries on the systems being compared are the same. Given that battery voltage _changes_ during a discharge cycle, this is far from a given even the batteries are completely identical.

If Apple really wanted to halve battery current, they could just change the cell configuration to double the voltage. Bingo!, except the laptop won't actually run any longer on a charge.

</comment><comment><USER36> Very happy to hear that idle is better. Very unhappy to hear that usage is worse.

I would prefer not to think about my usage patterns and just sit back knowing my new laptop (2016 mbp) is always better than my old (2015 mbp) one in all cases.

<comment><USER37> The first generation "Retina" machines were not without their drawbacks either, but those were ironed out quickly enough. If you update every single year you'll be intimately aware of these problems. If, like most, you're on a 3-5 year cycle it's largely irrelevant.

People used to buy cars every two to three years as well, but now it's common to retain them for a lot longer unless you're leasing.

<comment><USER26> If you are on a 3–5 year cycle it is relevant because you would be stuck with it for 3–5 years. Unless you like the hassle of migrating to your new MacBook Pro, test it for a week, and then return it. If you are unlucky, you can't migrate back because the newly upgraded macOS, iTunes library or Photos library is not compatible with your old macOS, iTunes library or Photos library. So you won't be able to migrate back or open your libraries.

<comment><USER37> You have 14 days to decide you don't like it and take it back, no penalty, which is nice. Plus if you're on a 3-5 year cycle skipping a year is no big deal.

It's also unlikely you're OS locked on a 3-year old machine. My 2012 MacBook Pro still runs current versions of macOS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Until you steam a video or play a game, like Civilization or XCom (from 2012). Then the battery just dies at a near 1% per minute rate. "Great battery! ... until you actually go to do something that uses power." I did a side by side test and the battery on my new MBP lasts the same as my 2013 MBP for streaming conference calls -- under 2 hours for both. (I had them call each other with cameras aimed at each other while both streaming Netflix.)

<comment><USER39> Have you updated the OS? I found battery to be a problem on my 15" until 10.12.3, wherein it's much improved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> It's 76Wh in 2016 vs 99Wh in 2015 -- a 24% smaller battery. To have the same battery time, it must draw 24% less current than it did with the 2015 model.

Secondly, we should always compare watts instead of amps unless we know the batteries have the exact same voltages.

For example, for a battery life of 18h it must draw 4.2W on average (76Wh/18h). I don't think that's possible because only the 2016 MacBook uses that little power -- 4.1W (41Wh/10h).

<comment><USER41> Let's compare the numbers quoted by the author:

619mA * 11.1V = 6.87W

430mA * 11.1V = 4.77W

So it's the difference of about 2 watts between the 2015 MBP and the 2016 MBP, or roughly 30% less consumption.

 _> I'm impressed that the new MBP will happily sit at a 500 mA power draw for long stretches of time._

It's virtually useless to tell people the amount of current something is using without also mentioning the voltage. I don't know why the author is discussing this in terms of current instead of watts.

5W isn't overly impressive for a laptop. My 2012 Dell (admittedly without retina display, but with 5 year old components) idles in Linux at ~7W with the brightness at 50%. If you close the lid to turn off the display, this will drop to 5W.

So, 5 years, a HDPI display, and Apple is down to 5W.

Anyone with a Dell XPS 13 or XPS 15 who can comment on power consumption? I'm not overly impressed by this number from Apple, it seems par for the course for Intel hardware over the past few years.

The biggest problem for laptop battery life is Windows. My Dell came with Windows 7 and I wouldn't get 3 hours on the 6 cell battery (65Wh). I installed Linux on it and now I can get 6-7 hours comfortably.

Maybe Windows 10 has improved this somewhat, but Windows 7 is terribad for laptop battery life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Cant wait for the new round of MBPs. This one just seems like a catastrophe... I can deal with the butterfly keyboard, anemic CPUs, and USB-c and even the outrageous price. Just not all as a package!

</comment><comment><USER43> Interesting, and nice to hear a little good news for once about the new MBP's, heh.

I actually am thinking about upgrading my old MBA, and have considered the non-touchbar MBP. At this point, though, I'm not sure if I should be waiting for Kaby Lake. Does anyone have stats on how much that should improve performance or battery life? It's likely the next revision of MBP, maybe later this year (?), will support the newer processors, right?

</comment><comment><USER44> With mine, on the plus side I am getting about 14 hours a day of work - that's connected to WiFi, using a Citrix VDE for about 9 hours, along with local office suite, email, browsing, iTunes, etc.

On the negative side, if I'm playing Civ 5 whilst plugged in the battery is still discharging - albeit very slowly. I'm not sure what would happen if it actually got to zero. I assume it would switch off, despite being plugged in?

</comment><comment><USER45> I suspect that 'BatteryTimeRemaining.c' is used in both iOS and OSX builds. It seems unlikely that a MacBook would have an extra battery pack.

<comment><USER46> If it's plugged into a UPS (silly, but possible), it sort of does!

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Why is the power draw measured in milliamps, wouldn't watts be more appropriate? The voltage of the battery drops as it discharges, so 500mA when it's fully charged isn't the same as 500mA when it's nearly empty. Unless that is taken after the voltage has been regulated, but in that case again why are we measuring the capacity in amp-hours instead of watt-hours?

</comment><comment><USER48> The suggested Battery Guru app is cool - running it now on my Air. Just found charging the phone increases the draw from 450 mA to 1200 roughly [https://macdaddy.io/mac-battery-guru/](https://macdaddy.io/mac-battery-guru/)

</comment><comment><USER49> Its very efficient _at doing NOTHING_. Start using CPU and its 1 hour max.

<comment><USER50> The overwhelming majority of the time, most users' CPUs are idle. Idle drain matters.

<comment><USER49> Macbook Pro used to be for Power Users, not 'most users'. Power users do not drop $3K on a laptop to let it sit idle, they compile stuff, run multiple VMs, convert videos etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I ordered the 2016 MBP w/touchbar and had it completely die within 2 weeks. Just came back from lunch and it wouldn't power on. I don't think this has been as widespread of an issue as low battery performance. It was a bummer because I have been using macs for quite a while and really like to develop on them but now I am having doubts on getting another one. Would probably prefer a MacPro if they ever updated them.

<comment><USER52> One of my friend had the same problem, took him several weeks to deal with it, this might be a quality control issue.</comment></comment>


Interactive constraint solving in Haskell - <AUTHOR> http://www.mattkeeter.com/projects/constraints/ <comment><USER2> Interesting article. It is also possible to resolve constraints probabilistically (i.e. without gradient descent), which is a good approach for functions which are very "unsmooth." I wonder if it is possible to replicate this article using a probabilistic solver (e.g. [http://poincare.github.io/DCFL/](http://poincare.github.io/DCFL/) \- a Haskell probabilistic constraint solving lib. written by me).

<comment><USER3> I think it'd also be cool to look at more sophisticated deterministic methods with these nice visualizations. I imagine a similar diagram that shows the expansion and contraction of the trust region in an L-M solver would be pretty enlightening as well. Or look at the path taken by steepest descent for pathological cost functions like the Rosenbrock banana.

I've done visualizations like this in Mathematica, which is really awesome for doing interactive visualizations, but it'd be fun to redo these in Haskell. I haven't done much plotting in Haskell, what libraries do people favor?

</comment></comment><comment> julien-c Cool visualizations, nicely done. By the way there is a typo in the "Constraint Solving" section, in the last equation, it currently is

      c_x - b_y = 1

It should read

      c_x - b_x = 1

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that's now fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> for some reason I get

        "([True,True],fromList [('x',1.7500000780766642),('y',-0.24999969839074443)])"

when i run

        print $ show $ solveSystem
         [ ((2 * x) + (3 * y)) * (x - y) === 2
         , (3 * x) + y === 5 ]
         $ Map.fromList [('x', 0),('y', 0)]

which doesn't match the suggested solutions.. using this code: [https://gist.github.com/80e982016a267b1f2e48](https://gist.github.com/80e982016a267b1f2e48)

* edit - lowering the precedence of === fixed it

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I've updated the page with a fix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Someone ought to make d3 bindings for ghcjs. It does have an ffi for a reason.

</comment><comment><USER6> Loving the haskell to javascript thingy. On my i7 4770 animations are still fast.

Although, I thought that animations were done completely in haskell but it seems that necessary functions were exported and data used in d3js.

<comment><USER7> It's a tiny bit janky on my macbook in Chrome (Canary), and runs like dog on Firefox (Nightly). Not that I care at all - the article is excellent and informative.

But it highlights one of the thing people forget when their language gets a JavaScript compiler: your render target is now the DOM, so you have to start caring/learning about that cross-browser world of pain!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What's with all the Haskell love I've been seeing on HN recently? I kinda feel good about taking that FP course in first year uni now.

<comment><USER9> Most likely explanation: Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon.

Slightly less likely: modern Haskell distills some ideas that have proven to be beneficial to software projects regardless of the language(s) they choose. As long as the number of HN users grows, and more and more of them realize the benefits of the FP paradigms championed by Haskell, there will be more upvotes for related submissions to the front page.</comment></comment>