User Research Gone Astray: The Case of Windows 8 Explorer - <AUTHOR> http://thomaspark.me/2011/10/user-research-gone-astray/ <comment><USER3> The article asserts that MS completely got it wrong but it doesn't even attempt to persuade the reader with arguments as to why. To me it isn't obvious that adding a ribbon with the most frequently used features to the top of the explorer is a bad approach.

I think the ribbon was a mostly a success in MS Office, Notepad, MS Paint, Wordpad and so on. So why not also use a ribbon in the explorer?

<comment><USER4> Bingo... This is what I was thinking about while reading the article, He cites 1 other blogger who has complained about this. Personally, I generally use the shortcuts for copy-paste but I do appreciate having the ability to avoid right-clicking to do some of the other tasks

<comment><USER5> You appreciate not having to right click? Right click is on your mouse, where as in order to use the ribbon you have to go up to the top. This seems like pulling the most useful feature out from under your finger to duplicate it somewhere further away. How does this make sense?

<comment><USER6> Because generally you don't merely right click. You right click and then have to navigate a small menu of options to find the one you want. The big button on the ribbon is a huge target and is generally easier for users to hit and click.

And for some reason, I personally find right-clicking with a track-pad much more difficult than right clicking with a mouse, although I haven't taken a lot of time to analyze why as I generally use a desktop machine with mouse.

<comment><USER7> Or right click and have to navigate a huge menu of options, if enough third- party shell extensions have had their way with your context menu ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article assumes that Microsoft's goal is to empower and delight the user. This isn't really the case; their goal is to reduce support costs for corporate IT departments. Many of Microsoft's strategies and tactics that seem nonsensical seem more sensible once you realize that corporate IT managers, rather than end users, are their customers.

<comment><USER9> I think that's a bit of a facile assumption. Sure, Enterprise is huge for Microsoft. _But so is the consumer space_. The vast majority of new computers sold are still Windows boxen, and at $250 a pop home users are still a massive market for Microsoft. Sure, many or their choices since the NT integration with XP have been driven by Enterprise needs, but not at the expense of home users.

I'm far more ready to believe that they simply messed up than that they are willing to make huge usability and design sacrifices just to appease IT managers.

Also, remember that we are probably the least important people to Microsoft. I'd say less than half of us run Windows on our personal machines. Our design sensibilities don't matter to them; they're designing for our mothers and technophobic friends. In a word (3), the facebook crowd. We use keyboard shortcuts, they consider having to right-click to be a burden and a skill that needs to be learned. We compare the relative benefits of various anti-malware tools, they renew their subscription of Norton that came with their computer three years ago. We lament the general craptitude of cmd.exe, they would be scared if they ever saw it. We talk about the inferiority of snap-to-grid fonts versus anti-aliasing, and they wouldn't know what kerning was if it bit them in the ass.

Windows is not designed for the tech and design crowd, so while we might think of the ribbon as a design travesty, the people it's designed for are the ones who have three toolbars strewn across the top of ie6.

<comment><USER8> Let's just say that my analysis is not uninformed. There are countless examples of how Microsoft puts IT managers' needs first -- if this were not the case, IE6 would have been stricken from the face of the earth five years ago.

You're also quite mistaken to think that Microsoft (who, you'll recall, is still run by Steve "DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS" Ballmer), doesn't care about what nerds think. It's no accident that they have a whole division to sell tools and technologies to developers that's separate from their cash cow operating system and productivity divisions.

<comment><USER9> >You're also quite mistaken to think that Microsoft ... doesn't care about what nerds think.

We aren't the target market for _Windows_. Yes, Microsoft wants to get more developers on .NET making Windows apps, and to the extent that it needs them to use Windows they'll make it at least usable for that purpose, but they aren't about to make Windows harder to use for your grandma just to court us. We prefer keyboard shortcuts (which they have) to messy buttons all over the place, but if buttons make the product more usable for their core market then that's what they'll do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> When the F will people start seeing things from a non-power users perspective before writing such a rant?! At the very least, back up your post with some sort of an objective argument.

I know a lot of people who spend minutes looking for simple options that are hidden in menu entries. I think the ribbon is going to be of good use for such people who'd appreciate the most common use-cases/functions within the reach of a mouse-click.

<comment><USER11> _for such people_

Except those people are quickly dying out - literally.

Also, by any metric, the visual layout and appearance are beyond terrible. There doesn't seem to be a logical grouping at all.

If _this_ is the answer then someone must have asked the wrong question. (a button labeled "easy access"? seriously?)

<comment><USER12> "Except those people are quickly dying out - literally."

Eh, I strongly disagree. I still have the misfortune to every now and then watch people who are supposed to be from the 'internet generation' (in their teens to early twenties) struggle with just-beyond-basic computer tasks - <USER2> opening a file with a different program when the extension association has somehow been screwed up. When I extrapolate their demographic traits, I can come to no other conclusion than that the vast majority of the general population does not have the computer skills that designers and software developers assume them to have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > _"It seems that essentially, every single command that customers have used > or requested has been moved into a ribbon or wedged into some corner of the > chrome. And many are rightfully lambasting it."_

Being surprised by Microsoft employing the ribbon and persistent UI elements in a redesign of any software product is nothing short utter cluelessness.

The story of the ribbon: [<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl9kD693ie4>]

<comment><USER14> I followed Jensen's blog postings all throughout the development of the ribbon; but it's all highly unconvincing to me, because it fundamentally is _at odds with how I interact with software_. Menus work for me because they are lists of text; when I'm looking for a command, a list of text is exactly what I want. If it's a command that I use often, it doesn't belong in a menu - for that, something like a ribbon might be a good idea, though a toolbar uses less space and doesn't have tabs, so I think it's better - but for commands I don't use often, lists of text are very close to ideal.

<comment><USER13> > _"but it's all highly unconvincing to me, it fundamentally is at odds with > how I interact with software"_

The same argument could have been made about GUI's v command lines or command lines v punch cards.

Any new UI architecture will be fundamentally at odds with how you interact with software.

<comment><USER14> Sure, any new UI modality will be at odds. But for mouse-oriented UI, I haven't seen anything better for a situation where you have many, yet infrequent, commands. A search interface seems like it could work well, but you'd have to know (a) that the software supported the command you're looking for, and (b) what aliases the software supported for that command. The Windows start menu search kinda works, most of the time; but that's because you generally know whether or not you have a particular piece of software installed. But when you don't know 100% if the software actually has the feature, and you're looking for it...

So in the absence of an effective search, it seems clear that a list of commands, grouped into categories, is best for finding infrequent functionality - particularly when a mouse is the modality.

One thing I am absolutely certain of: searching for a command in a ribbon is harder than searching a menu. I've had opportunity to do both in unfamiliar UIs, and searching ribbons is definitely harder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't understand the complaint. The new interface clearly presents what options/actions are available with text names and pictures. Compared to hunting through various menus with only an action's name to determine what something does, this seems an improvment. I would agree that the Ribbon looks visually busy, but isn't it easier to scan through the Ribbon than search through multiple menus to locate an action, or to remember a option's location on the Ribbon than in a menu? Besides, a user knowledgeable of Explorer short cuts can hide the Ribbon for more usable space.

Useful information consolidated at the bottom of the new Explorer compared to the previous screenshot where the same information is either not present, or present in multiple places, feels like a good improvement as well.

With the push towards tablets and touch, doesn't the new Explorer make sense compared to interacting with the Explorer through menus, right click, or some other context sensitive input? I say this considering the Build keynote, where (I think) they mentioned that they believed in a future of even regular monitors being touch-enabled. Having main options clearly present and touch friendly works towards this.

<comment><USER14> No, it's easier to scan menus, because they are left-aligned lists of text. Ribbons have tiles of various sizes depending on measured importance of the action, and that busyness makes it harder to scan.

The lower screenshot looks like someone visually puked all over the top of it. It's got knobs and gizmos hanging out like a big mess of wires, something you'd expect to see in a stereotypical movie genius's garage, not a user- friendly UI.

(Touch UI is a complete red herring, IMO. You want different UIs for different input modalities. That's exactly the opposite of making your mouse UI look like a touch UI; that approach is just as bad as making your touch UI look like a mouse UI, which is roughly what Windows kept repeating and failing with tablets and "Windows for Pen Computing" - the failure here literally goes back decades.)

<comment><USER16> _and that busyness makes it harder to scan._

I couldn't agree more. No idea why you're being downvoted, you make excellent points.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Are we missing the fact that you can click the up arrow in the top right and the ribbon disappears? That is essentially the "power user" button.

</comment><comment><USER18> I wish they'd fix all the annoying little things they broke in Windows 7 before moving onto anything new.

In Windows XP, copying files over a network worked. In Windows 7, some "improvements" seem to result in abysmal file copying performance on a very noticeable proportion of machines/networks. The Web is full of such stories, and the best anyone has come to fixing them is basically random tweaking of low-level network parameters that no user should ever have to go anywhere near on the off chance that turning off something supposedly beneficial will fix whatever incompatibility or feedback loop is crippling performance on any given system.

On Windows XP, you could navigate folders in the tree in explorer by clicking once to expand and open a folder. In Windows 7, I have yet to find any way to avoid double-clicking or aiming for those dinking little triangles to expand each folder, which is not terribly efficient on a modern large, high- resolution display. Also, why do they hide the triangles unless you're hovering in the correct area with the mouse? Might a user not want to know which folders they can see in the tree also contain nested subfolders? Again, Windows XP did this fine, and the Windows 7 behaviour is objectively inferior in this respect.

<comment><USER14> ClassicShell fixed much of the oddities of Windows Explorer's tree view for me; it brought back the +, and makes it stay even when you're not hovering with the mouse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> There's a difference between making something more (vs less) accessible based on usage patterns, and making things impossible to do at all.

Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft, and as long as they don't touch cmd.exe or powershell.exe, the Windows org can do whatever they want to Explorer...

</comment><comment><USER20> I think the point of the ribbon is to get rid of rightclick menus and the menu bar. This is certainly a requirement for making a touch-first UI.

That said, it will necessarily make mouse based interaction more clunky. But they are committed to touch first, so this is not negotiable.

My issue with the new explorer UI is more specifically about the choices they made within the ribbon. Why put something that provably is never used in there at all? Why not put context-aware stuff in a context aware tab like the image tab in Word (only visiblw when an image is selectad)?

<comment><USER21> _Why put something that provably is never used in there at all?_

It's important not to confuse "never used because it's useless" and "never used because nobody knows about it".

Of the items in the Windows 8 "Home" tab that fewer than 84% of people use, half of them appear to be new features and half are features that exist in Windows 7 but don't appear in the toolbar or any context-menu, have no keyboard shortcut, and aren't documented in the help files. People who used these features in XP could be forgiven for thinking Microsoft removed them in Vista.

 _Why not put context-aware stuff in a context aware tab like the image tab in Word_

They do. In their blog post they have examples of context-sensitive tabs for libraries, drives, and images.

</comment></comment><comment> dorian-graph Everyone knows better than Microsoft, of course.

</comment><comment><USER22> The most important UI element in that photo is the little hat in the upper- right corner.

</comment><comment><USER23> Souping up the file browser in your next operating system is like putting New Balances on your next horse.

</comment><comment><USER24> Very very good article. Shit, in fact, the fact that I hurt my foot. But, other than that, not shit, but an excellent article. Not shit at all. Congrats.</comment>


Linus Torvalds Rant on Media commit causes user space to misbahave - <AUTHOR> https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75 <comment><USER2> Title is certainly weird -- his rant did not cause the user space to misbehave, the bad commit did.

Seems like he is having a very bad day. Still, I'm glad I'm not skilled enough to even attempt to work on the Linux kernel. I feel sad that others might be scared away, but maybe that's keeping the quality up.

</comment><comment><USER3> 2012 well known rant...</comment>


Microsoft Reveals the Science Behind Project Natal for Xbox 360 - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=microsoft-project-natal <comment><USER2> I worked in computer vision for my MSc three years ago, and based on the state-of-the-art at that time I would be surprised if Natal going to be as robust as the mass market expects. This kind of thing is notoriously hard and error-prone. The information coming in from cameras is often so noisy and incomplete it is very difficult to tell what you are seeing.

When Natal was unveiled at E3, it was having exactly the kind of issues I expected: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKtpJW9pg84>

Also the rumour that they have chopped Natal's onboard CPU and moved most of the processing to the Xbox 360 CPU does not fill me with optimism... Prove me wrong, Microsoft, prove me wrong!

<comment><USER3> I got to play the Natal Ricochet game this summer and I must say that it worked flawlessly. The only thing that didn't feel natural was the response time, which they said they were trying to improve.

<comment><USER2> Maybe, but performing well in controlled press tour and demo environments is very different than performing well in a million different kinds of living room and lighting configurations. I'm not saying the tech is going to utterly fail, but these things typically do present a lot of problems for computer vision technology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One thing I want to see done is a good swordfighting game. The Wii hasn't achieved that yet, but some of the videos for Red Steel 2 show promise. Overall, it seems that even with good motion sensing for swinging the sword, footwork is still an integral part of the whole experience, which the Wii can't manage. So in this case, perhaps Project Natal will be the first to manage it?

Then again, perhaps rather than wait for a game to simulate it, it would be better to do the real thing instead.

<comment><USER5> The problem with that is twofold. First, the Wii doesn't support absolute 3d positioning. So it can't map an in game object 1:1 with the controller. From there, it is left looking at your acceleration data and then after the fact matching it to a predetermined set and playing the move. It becomes a weak substitute for pressing a button.

The second one is how to handle tactile feedback. Ideally, when your sword hits another sword, you'd want the player's sword to stop. You might be able to vibrate as a cue to stop moving, but hard to say how that would work. You could work around it by having the on-screen character tween back to the real- life position after a period of time, but it still leaves a lot to be desired.

Long way to go before you can sword fight realistically in a game.

<comment><USER6> It can with the new add-on thing (the wii motion plus or whatever it's called).

<comment><USER5> Actually, it can't. That adds more precision to the acceleration measurements, but it still can't do proper absolute positioning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Natal definitely has potential to revolutionize HCI, but I find it hard to believe it will help Xbox match the success of the Wii.

I cringe every time I see that video from E3 of that poor woman flailing on stage, swatting virtual dodge balls. Like Tony Hawk: Ride, when games start becoming too real, they tend to stop being fun.

Also, consider amputee or wheel-chair bound gamers who don't fit the typical body shape. Perhaps a small market, but a potential PR nightmare when Iraq veterans are told they don't have enough points of articulation for Natal.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if this is a tactical error. While the Wii sells well, there really isn't a lot of compelling software for it. Often the interface adds little, or even takes away from gameplay. Perhaps it's just really hard to get right.

disclaimer: I own a Wii

<comment><USER9> I think that the fact that Natal is coming out several years after the 360's introduction will help. The Wiimote/accelerometer-based-control has been marketed as an integral part (probably the most recognizable part) of the Wii experience. In keeping with that, most people don't own Gamecube-style controllers, so making games that use a more traditional interface is a losing proposition on the Wii.

In contrast, Natal is a purely optional add-on, and I'm not sure on this but I'm not sure it will be possible to control non-Natal-enabled games or the Xbox 360 dashboard without a traditional controller. This way, game developers can choose the controller paradigm that makes sense for the game, and the Natal ecosystem can grow organically, rather than have it foisted upon people. Maybe this is a recipe for languishing and fragmentation, but I can see how this strategy could work out better for Microsoft than Nintendo's did for them.

The technology could also be intrinsically much better, who knows?

<comment><USER10> Optional peripherals are a chicken-and-egg problem. Consumers won't buy it if there are no compelling games for it, and publishers aren't willing to commit to the peripheral (e.g., controllers not allowed) if there are not enough consumers that own the peripheral.

Microsoft can address this by stepping up and making Natal a required accessory for some hit game. The trick then is finding Natal's "killer app", which we have yet to really see.

It's going to be tough - see Microsoft's FF Steering wheel and the 360 webcam as evidence. The wheel is confined to racing games and isn't useful for much more, and the webcam is fun for a few nights but doesn't have a lasting appeal. The only webcam game I'm aware of was the one shipped by MS, and it's not very fun (and very tiring on the arms). Both devices are successful in their own scenarios, but are still niche products (how many games have you seen that use the camera?).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm only interested if it comes with a Wolfmother soundtrack.

<comment><USER11> Ahem.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2qlHoxPioM#t=0m22s> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKjV_bWnFCM#t=0m39s>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> They taught a computer to perceive the world? Most misleading title ever.

<comment><USER9> What? Maybe this comment was intended for a different story; the title seems fairly explanatory to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think this sums it up pretty well ;-)

<http://image.tutorvista.com/content/heat/water-cycle.jpeg></comment>


Income and Infidelity - daniel-cussen http://bigthink.com/ideas/23905 <comment> daniel-cussen The thesis here is that young, poor women cheat much more than rich women. So much so that 30% of poor children were not sired by the men they think their father, while in rich families this is only the case for 2% of children.

<comment><AUTHOR> Another key point is that men at all income levels are about equally likely to cheat, and younger men are only slightly more likely to cheat than older men.</comment></comment>


The Highway Less Traveled (1998) - <AUTHOR> https://www.greensboro.com/the-highway-less-traveled/article_5e9d9ffd-5abf-59d4-8630-048594cbcb88.html <comment><AUTHOR> Robert Wood Kruch's dictum, sometimes abbreviated to bad roads make good filters, strikes me as a melding of Gresham's Law and the Jevons paradox.</comment>


Ask HN: Any OSS Node.js projects need more developers? - <AUTHOR>

I've been noodling on some of my own Node.js ideas for a while, but I'd really like to hop on board an already semi-established project.
I've never submitted patches or code to others' open source projects before, and I'd really like to start giving back to the community.
I can't commit a huge amount of time or LOC, but I'd definitely like to help out.
Are you working on a particularly interesting OSS project in Node? Let me know! <comment><USER2> What kind of projects would you be most interested in? We're open-sourcing RetroCrawl (<http://retrocrawl.com>) if you might be interested. I know Prenup (<http://github.com/nodejitsu/prenup>) will probably want help but they're not directly advertising. Lots of nodeknockout.com entries will probably want help.

</comment><comment><USER3> How about this perhaps - not established yet but just starting: [http://groups.google.co.uk/group/nodejs/browse_thread/thread...](http://groups.google.co.uk/group/nodejs/browse_thread/thread/3130bdd9eb6f61e5)</comment>


7 Reasons Why My Social Music Site Never Took Off - <AUTHOR> http://dmix.ca/2008/06/7-reasons-why-my-social-music-site-never-took-off/

<comment><USER2> "Bad launch, the launch of the site wasn't planned very well at all. I decided to use the "genius" marketing ploy of having a private beta to create scarcity."

What percentage of great/enviable web startups had a GREAT launch? I'm not saying a good launch isn't valuable, but it doesn't merit being on a list of top reasons you failed.

Read this: [http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/06/not-so- grand...](http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/06/not-so-grand.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> A good read dmix but do not despair. Only a very few startups ever get any traction and you have done a nice job of identifying some of the reasons.

The nice thing about software startups is that no matter how unsuccessful a business model or product introduction might be you have expanded your personal code base and increased your marketability to potential clients (e.g. now you will be able to charge $200 an hour instead of $100)..

</comment><comment><USER4> I find it inspiring that you managed to get this up and running as well as you did while in college. Keep trying and I'm sure you'll go far.

</comment><comment><USER5> > He called at about 11pm

That seems late for a phone call to somebody you don't know. Or is it assumed in the startup world that everybody is a night owl?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, he was calling from California on the west coast and we were in Toronto on the east. I think it's about a 4 hr difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Did you consider that your site may have failed because it uses a black background? How many very successful websites do you know that use black backgrounds?

</comment><comment><USER7> About the Cold Start problem...couldn't you have written a bot to crawl the web looking for random albums? There are quite a few mp3/music blogs. Or another interesting idea would be to scan Last.fm and see what's going up the charts.

Anyway, great post :D

</comment><comment><USER8> _"We were offering information on great albums and community voting. But other sites like Last.fm and Hype Machine were offering the actual music"_

Hard to have a music site without actual music. My $.02. Good insight though, thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER9> Interesting story. If the cofounder couldn't contribute much on the technical end, it seems like he should've been more involved in finding new material for the site. But then you said that he didn't like indie music much. So why was he your cofounder again?

<comment><USER10> I think that was the gist behind the "Niche Social Networks are not Businesses" section near the end. His friend was brought on as a cofounder because he believed that business knowledge would be important. He learned that, at least in his case, having a "business knowledge" person was not very helpful in getting the site off the ground.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I love the part about the phone call. That's the sort of thing you can look back on and laugh, but at the time it probably seemed like a huge deal. At least its something you can learn from next time, and thats a good thing.

</comment><comment><USER12> Good stuff:

Niche Social Networks are not Businesses

<comment><USER13> They aren't?

<http://howardforums.com/> <http://www.gaiaonline.com/> <http://www.ytmnd.com/>

From: <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/meganiche_pr.html>

<comment><USER14> Businesses can be made from niches. Niche business can have social networks. However, niche social networks are not businesses.

You see which way it flows? With a niche business, the social network is a subset of the functionality if it exists at all. If it is _just_ a niche social network, it probably is not a business.

<comment><USER15> I don't know, a social network can be made into a business, but one has to treat it as a social network, before it becomes a business.

Once the social network qua social network is healthy, you can then monetize it. It's a lot of work, and the financial rewards are little, but if you do it right, you can get a strong and loyal user base and maybe make a few friends.

<comment><USER16> Facebook started out as a niche social network for Ivy League students.

<comment><USER17> And technically it's still losing money hand over fist. But I'm with you, I think niche social networks have more money making potential actually. Linked In is a good example, they have been profitable for a while.

<comment><USER18> People who work is not really a niche

<comment><USER16> People who work AND network online is a niche I would say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> you know people always talk about "our site was not ready for TC", but has anyone ever posted what kind of infrastructure you actually need to be ready for all that traffic?

<comment><USER14> I think his technical infrastructure was ready for it, but his marketing infrastructure was not ready to take full advantage of it.

I've been TC'd once before, and it hit us at the worst possible time- a temporary banner was up for the hours before launch. That banner got more attention in the article than the service. The site held up fine, but >80% of the traffic was wasted. I think this is a pretty common phenomena.

<comment><USER19> what were your server(s) specs?

<comment><USER20> TechCrunch really just doesn't send that much traffic.

If you can do 50 reqs/second you will be absolutely fine; it doesn't take any kind of special server.

<comment><USER21> Ditto. I handled hitting the front page of /., digg, and yahoo tech on the same day on a single dual core server. The site slowed down a little during the worst of it, but page load times were always reasonable. Unless your app is a total beast and/or you require a large amount of resources to service each user, a single server is probably fine.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


FBI: Ira Isaacs Sentenced in Adult Obscenity Case - <AUTHOR> http://www.fbi.gov/losangeles/press-releases/2013/ira-isaacs-sentenced-in-adult-obscenity-case

<comment><AUTHOR> This guy got 48 months in prison for producing/selling obscene videos. He cited "2 Girls, 1 Cup" in his defense (produced by a Brazilian, and not prosecuted), and the unit responsible for going after obscenity on the Internet, under George W. Bush, has since been disbanded -- this was the last prosecution.

The videos are quite disgusting, but I think it sets a dangerous precedent to prosecute for adult obscenity.</comment>


Letterpress — A minimal, Markdown based blogging system written in Python - <AUTHOR> http://wangling.me/2013/01/letterpress.html <comment><USER2> It's worth remembering that 99.999% of ordinary users will never switch to a static generation blog system, no matter how carefully it is explained.

The problem really is that _somebody_ has to pay the piper.

I'm going to create a new rule.

        Chester's First Law:

        Essential complexity in the problem domain
        is a conserved quantity.

Either your system absorbs and obscures it; or you push it back on the user somehow. Even _within_ a system you can push it around to different places, but it never goes away.

Consider: the problem domain for a blogging system is take stuff from an author and produce HTML for readers.

Movable Type used to "build" a whole site at a time. Wordpress does it per- view unless you use caching. Wordpress won _inter alia_ because the cost of the complexity was pushed from the authors to the readers -- and it's authors who pick the blogging engine.

Static site generators are like Movable Type, in that they take the essential complexity that used to be on the readers and push it back to the author.

A more complex system would strike a balance by proactively generating new cached output based on POSTs, not GETs. That would push both halves of the essential complexity into the system itself, away from both authors and readers.

At all times, the sum of essential complexity has been conserved.

<comment><USER3> Blogger used to (maybe still does?) have an FTP option that would render a static version of your blog and push it to your own hosting account.

Personally, that's what I'd like to see. A cms or email based blog that generates the static files and pushes them to whatever service/host you want (Dropbox, s3, github, FTP, SFTP, etc).

<comment><USER4> How about some caching/proxy layer on top of Wordpress that both creates AND serves the static versions of the pages?

<comment><USER3> I mean, I think that's what some of the caching plugins do now , but in my experience they require a ton a configuration (e.g. a 100+ line .htaccess file). Plus I'm just not a fan of WP in general.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There are dozens of such projects now, all of them 1 or 2% different from the others, little differences that would be more suitable as plugins or extensions to a defacto static generator (Jekyll).

Instead we get a mass duplication of effort into implementing essentially the same thing, a common problem with open source projects.

What is really required is a dead-simple static generator, the equivalent to what Wordpress and Movable Type did for the old style of blogging. A simple app that ordinary computer users can plug their FTP or S3 details into and then publish.

<comment><USER6> Why don't you write the dead-simple static generator. Then we can observe that it is only 2% different from the others and throw it on the pile :)

<comment><USER5> I tried:

<https://github.com/nikcub/floyd>

I had a bunch of friends and family members who needed simple static sites so I generated it for them (this was before Jekyll).

I could use it myself, but I could never get them to do the updates themselves from their own machines.

Once Jekyll and the rest came out, I switched my own use over and switched everybody else over to Weebly, and then didn't bother continuing work on Floyd and just let it idle (I pushed it up to GitHub).

Each time one of these projects is released I scan through them and try them out to see if there is any new idea to pick up on.

It then occurred to me that a real innovation in this space is a lot of work and trial+error.

For technical people, you have Jekyll, Hyde, etc. For non-technical people you don't really have anything at the moment. I think a project with a web interface that generates files would be interesting, or having a folder of text files (or Word, Pages etc. documents) that are then generated and uploaded by double-clicking on an icon.

I know there are a bunch of apps in the Mac AppStore in this space, but I haven't tried any of them - so it is possible that this solution already exists. I am not so in love with the idea that I would drop everything else right now to work on it.

Edit: I realize my original comment might offend OP but I didn't intend it to be that way, there are only so many ways you can say "work on expanding the potential uses rather than reimplementing etc." without it sounding dickish

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if the author knows that "Letterpress" is a rather popular iOS game.

<comment><USER8> Does it matter?

<comment><USER9> It'll matter when the blog guy wants an iOS app and has to call it "LP MAKER PLUS" or something dumb.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Major issue in the static blog:

There no comments, and if you want comments, they're not owned by you.

I read there's some local comment servers being written (ie you cleanly separate the blog static content and the dynamic comments), but i've yet to see a "mainstream one that just works" (tm).

<comment><USER11> I'm writing my own blog engine after Posterous' announcement. The way it works is that I create a static site which is upload somewhere, and it also publishes the post on Facebook and Twitter. Discussion happens there, on the social networks, and on the next build the comments are downloaded and stored in static files. This way when Facebook dies all the discussions will remain on the static site -- for good or bad. :-P

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I blog since 2000. I used almost all blogging platforms. Now I'm switching to Jekyll from Wordpress. Most of the blogging tools, specially those with mySQL, have an unlimited growth of features. Instead becoming limited, and scalable with plugins they start to become slower as bigger in code to do simply blogging. These tools derivate to website making tools, wich is really odd.

I love Jekyll. I'm designer and I didn't had too much trouble to switch from wordpress to something local on my machine and deploy it to my own server.

Today is the first day I will be completely off from Wordpress.

</comment><comment><USER13> That's not minimal. 18LOC is minimal [https://github.com/kaihendry/sg- hackandtell/blob/master/Make...](https://github.com/kaihendry/sg- hackandtell/blob/master/Makefile)

<comment><USER14> Use pandoc instead of markdown (the executable), then it gets even smaller. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Seems like another similar system to Jekyll, et al. I don't think many heavily technical people understand how alienating this kind of approach is to the average user. Wordpress is popular because its understandable, installation is done in such a way that its fairly easy and its powerful enough.

Static generation blogs may seem simple to us but to most people who want to blog they seem ridiculously complicated.

</comment><comment><USER16> Are static site generators the new "hello world?"

<comment><USER17> yeah ! , why not ? it's a cool thing to code imho.

<comment><USER10> Good point actually. It's simple and easy too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Funnily enough, I just wrote something similar in node[1] and one of my mates has just written one in Go too. Great minds, or something :-)

[1]: <https://github.com/benrhughes/crashdown>

<comment><USER19> Would you mind linking to your friend's implementation in Golang? I'm learning the language and want to see how he did it.

<comment><USER18> Sure: <http://paulsamways.com/projects/upublish>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> For those interested in a not-self-hosted option, I built <http://throwww.com>

Growing user base, very simple, markdown-based (includes video markdown), includes RSS & Comments

<end self promotion>

</comment><comment><USER21> How would you add comments to something like this, if you wanted to have comments for some (probably idiotic and ill thought out, based on most blog comments) reason? Would you be able to embed disqus or something?

<comment><AUTHOR> It is easy to add Disqus. In fact, I tried using it and there are some commented-out Disqus css in default.css. I disabled it because I really don't need comment right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> So to use dropbox for publishing, the author recommends registering two accounts on dropbox.com. Would that carry a risk of account termination? Sounds like an easy way to game the free space for invites bonus.

</comment><comment><USER23> > _Comments are also just ego feeders_

I hate when I can't comment on a blog, like right now I can't remark that comments are useful. And I can't comment that RSS is useful, and that I used it a lot in Firefox (not anymore in Chrome now, Google Reader sucks).

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course you can, here, and I see them:) If you want comments, it is easy to add Disqus. RSS is something I'll consider later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> So is "Those who do not remember blosxom are doomed to repeat it" a cliche yet?

</comment><comment><USER25> Remind me of Alexis Sellier's awesome micro blog engine toto(<https://github.com/cloudhead/toto>), created 3 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER26> This reminds me a lot of scriptogr.am

Both use dropbox, markdown. The difference is that scriptogram doesn't run from your localhost and its not a static site. Still, there are a lot of similarities

</comment><comment><USER27> Newbie programmer here. How hard would it be to add RSS to this? It could be an interesting project to help me learn Python.

</comment><comment><USER28> Built my own a few months back in node for publishing using git to Heroku. Markdown flavored micro blogging is hip!</comment>


I just moved into an RV, where I will live and work for the next year - <AUTHOR> http://nerdnomad.com/the-rv-loophole/ <comment><USER2> I've been doing this for two years, most recently in San Francisco. Might be some useful information in these links:

<http://tynan.net/living-in-a-small-rv-introduction> (Intro) <http://tynan.net/video-tour-of-my-rv> (Video tour) <http://tynan.net/deluxerv> (Remodel with wood / marble floors)

Tynan

<comment><AUTHOR> I've read them all (I've been following your posts off-and-on since the Ghetto Indoor Pool). Your posts were a contributing factor in my decision to do this. I owe you a beer or three; hopefully we'll cross paths at some point in the not too distant future.

<comment><USER2> Awesome... my RV is in the shop now, but would love to meet up and check out each other's RVs at some point (you know... like dogs sniffing butts)

Tynan

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you do when your RV is in the shop? I had a propane tank issue that seemed like it was going to require an overnight stay (it didn't, as it was just a gasket), and I was a bit flummoxed by the problem. I guess I'm maybe traveling a little heavier than you (big dog, and three very expensive guitars that I wouldn't want to leave in the truck while it's out of my hands, along with way too much other crap that it seems like I'd need to sort out, like the food in the fridge), but still...since I'm not towing a car, I guess I'd need to first rent a car, then hand over the RV, and settle in at a nearby hotel for the duration of repairs. Seems stressful, but I guess I'll cross that bridge if I come to it.

<comment><USER2> Normally I just buy a plane ticket somewhere where I have someone to visit, but this repair is taking a month (new engine!).

So far I've stayed with a friend for a week, took a trip to Austin and visited family for a couple days, and also rented a car and am staying at a friend's house across the bridge while he's out of town.

I took all of my food and laptop and left everything else... I trust the mechanics.

You could also just do a sublet. I was thinking of doing that since I knew the repair would be a month.

The hardest part was getting my moped back into the city. I had to stuff it in the trunk of a rental and drive with the trunk open.

Tynan

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Takes me back. 10 years I chucked in my job and bought an old clunker RV and just travelled the USA. While I wasn't working (the idea of a startup back then involved VC money and millions of it), I was doing my best to stay connected. For the most part this was using the old NetZero service and begging/borrowing/stealing a phone line. Very few RV parks had a modem service, and Wi-Fi and 3G were just pipedreams at that point.

I did 22,000 miles in my old Dodge (78 Class C) and saw more of the USA and Canada than most people ever will in a lifetime (I'm not from North America). From taking a snowmobile up a remote mountain to watching a satellite launch in Cape Canaveral, staying on Indian Reservations in AZ and hitting Irish pubs in NY, all was done in good time. I even found time to get stranded in a blizzard in North Dakota, which was so cold it froze all the water tanks.

Mainly I'm just reminiscing about a simpler time in my life, but my one piece of advice is about getting the RV level on streets. Get yourself some flat pieces of wood, and a simple spirit level. Keep the wood in one of the outside storage compartments. When you've got to park on the street, just put the wood in the lower side of the street and drive up. Check your level and adjust as necessary. The advantage of this is that someone driving past won't notice quickly (because it's usually the footpath side that's lower), like they would with the jacks. And if you need to make a speedy getaway (for instance, seeing patrolling cop cars) you can just drive off the wood and go - easy enough to get some new pieces somewhere.

Other tips include : don't park in obvious places like recreation area carparks, and never park outside someones house. You want to get more 'public' buildings like churches, schools, retirement homes and telephone exchanges, but without going into a deserted area. Nobody is generally in these buildings at night and you'll be gone in the morning. Street parking/sleeping is a fun pastime once you get into it because you really feel you're getting away with something. The only time I had any problem was when I had the motorhome parked outside my apartment, and my elderly neighbour rang the cops on me. I wasn't sleeping in it (obviously) but was always tinkering with bits and pieces, so she thought I was. Most cops don't care and if you're courteous and leave when told it won't go any further. It was easier for me to play the dumb card because of my accent.

Good luck with it, and I'll file this one away as something to think about. I think I'd need ubitiquos internet to get a little better, but it's probably something to think about.

<comment><USER4> Sorry, I didn't get something... what's the objective of parking on top of the piece of wood?

<comment><USER3> You need to get your rig level in order for the propane fridge to work. They work by a gravity feed of the material inside. Bascially, a burner heats up the liquid, which forms into a gas, and then condenses and runs down an intricate series of tubes back to the bottom, absorbing heat as it does so. If your rig is not completely level, then the liquid does not run down evenly, and you will burn out your fridge. Then your beer goes warm and the fun has definitely gone away.

Modern RV's have hydraulic/electric 'feet' that extend down and both stablise and level out the rig. These take time to put up and down and are very obvious when the are extended. If you just park on a couple of bits of wood, it's possible to get it level enough for the fridge to work OK. It doesn't look as obviously 'parked' to the casual passerby. And if you need to make a speedy getaway (for whatever reason, be it the law or unwanted company) you can just start up and drive off. That's what the wood is for.

<comment><USER5> Why don't they just tilt the fridge?

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems like maybe they could be mounted in a two-part rocking carrier, with a weight at the bottom of the fridge itself. It'd be a bit bigger and heavier, but it would allow safer operation of the fridge. It'd probably need to be lockable for driving, though. They may even make fancier models of fridge that can be safely operated on a bigger slope, I dunno. My RV is actually a pretty low end, bare bones, model. All of the accoutrement is toward the cheaper end of the scale. The big diesels tend to be decked out with the nicer kit.

They've also gotten a bit better at surviving sloped operation; modern ones can be operated while driving and for short periods parked on a slope. Older ones were more sensitive.

Also, sleeping on a tilt is uncomfortable. So, leveling is kind of useful for humans (and dogs), too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hey Joe. This is exciting! I have another friend (@catalyst) who pretty much lives in an RV year round, with a wife and two home-schooled kids. They've been at it for a few years now. Michael travels the country, consulting and giving speeches. If you ever breeze through Kansas City (wait till spring) look me up and I'll buy ya a beer and talk shop. We've exchanged disqus/twitter comments before.

</comment><comment><USER7> The bandwidth question has already been asked, but my next question is, what do you put as your permanent address for mail? Since you run a company, I assume your are sending everything to your lawyer or other service. Any suggestions or tips on that front?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is both simpler, and more complicated than you'd think.

It is simpler, because there are a number of really good services that will accept mail on your behalf. I chose St. Brendan's Isle, and I pay less than $20 per month for all of my names (I get mail to both Joe and Ronald) and my business name. They scan the covers of all non-junk mail, and I can then request scans of the contents of the mail or physical forwarding (for a small per-piece fee). The fact that they'll simply recycle any junk mail I get, automatically, makes me wish I'd _always_ used a service like this. I hate junk mail and I hate paper, so having everything shredded or digitized and never having paper except for what I explicitly ask for, is miraculous.

And it's more complicated than you'd think because the postal service requires a notarized form, along with multiple forms of ID (and those forms of ID beyond drivers license are strange, and I only had one of them, so it was a close call) in order to permit someone to open your mail. So you have to file a form for every name and business name that receives mail at the forwarding service.

My primary line of defense is to simply not get mail. I've switched to paperless statements from my bank and credit cards, I already had all of my other services setup with automatic withdrawal and such (and have canceled a lot of them). Even so, California still sends me crap all the time about payroll taxes and such.

There will be other issues. I need to read up on operating in California now that our address is in Florida. Jamie is still in California, and will remain a CA resident (while I'll be claiming Florida as my home this year, for no state income tax and lower vehicle registration fees). I don't know what we'll do about our various taxes for the business. We're a Delaware corporation, so that stays the same...but how we interact with California might change. I'll figure it out soon.

Another complication is that my new address is in a town I've never visited and in a state I haven't been to since I was a kid. I'll have to visit Florida at some point to register my RV and get my FL drivers license and voter registration. I should go visit the Wufoos, anyway, so this isn't a major hardship. But, it feels a little weird telling people my address and using it for billing address and such.

<comment><USER8> I've been using EarthClassMail for two years now. It's worked for my needs (serves as a registered address for business as well), but it's quite expensive and the web UI sucks.

I'd love to hear more about your experience with St. Brendan's. How is the scanning? Does it work for all your business needs (registered address, etc). Any tips?

My parents live in Florida, so that could make residency there easier as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> fyi, Many walmart stores will let you stay a single night in their parking lots. My parents have trailered all over the US and do that when they can't find a campground or if they just want to sleep for a few hours before moving on.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, there are a handful of big box stores that permit this. Also, many state and federal parks allow dry camping (with no water or electric provided) for very low rates. I haven't really begun to explore these options, yet, but will. My solar panels were delayed, and so power when boondocking has to come from my generator for another month or so, which isn't really something I want to run for several hours each day (I could probably do it with two or three hours a day of runtime to charge my batteries and my laptop, but I haven't experimented with that).

And, since it's currently the off-season, RV parks are pretty cheap. I'm paying $41.50 per night in a really nice place on the beach, vs. $71.50/night plus utilities at my house in Mountain View.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've thought about this pretty extensively--either an RV or a boat. Either way, bandwidth is a problem tho :-/

<comment><USER11> What do you need bandwidth for?

My father lived on a canal barge for the past 4 years and is now living in a custom RV. He loves the mobile life and dislikes being anchored to one spot too long.

He rents a virtual server with Linode for things that require constant monitoring, but it also provides him with a SSH tunnel for when he's using public internet.

He's parking in pub car-parks a lot of the time and as he's in the pub most evenings the landlords are happy with this. He uses their wi-fi (with permission) and gets great bandwidth and has his SSH tunnel to offer security.

When he's not parked with such favourable conditions he uses a 3G card which gives him decent reception everywhere. With a blackberry all of his email is taken care of so he only needs to get online to do specific things.

Now, granted he's not a programmer... but how much bandwidth does that SSH connection take? And if you're using a virtual server to do your downloads and then can drive by a wi-fi spot to collect them from the server then you would've successfully avoided the very expensive cost of a satellite connection.

<comment><USER12> the 3g cards I've used (currently a verison evdo card internal to a thinkpad x60s) seems to add about 150ms latency. this is usable, but not awesome for ssh connections.

<comment><USER13> In my experience Sprint is consistently 85-95ms, which is _just_ fast enough for smooth SSH - except when some link starts adding a few more tens of ms somewhere, in which case it gets pretty frustrating.

I find that I can pretty happily SSH into my boxes on the east coast (where I am) but those in Texas tend to be more of a problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Awesome! What are you using for internet access? Got a pic of your workspace?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is also my primary concern for the future of this project. I don't really know yet how it will work out.

Today I'm parked at Morro Dunes RV Park in Morro Bay. They have free WiFi that is excellent. I'm currently watching Torchwood on Netflix, while also uploading several large photos to flickr. It's not the 20-something Mbits I had in Mountain View via Comcast, but it's perfectly usable, and fast enough for everything I need to do, including repository syncs of our software. It has also been reliable all day, and Netflix streams have been completely smooth and without interruption for the couple of hours total I've been watching and working.

The KOA I stayed at in Monterey had very expensive ($14.95/day) and very slow/spotty Internet, though, so I don't expect Internet to be an easy problem everywhere. But, finding great Internet here in Morro Bay is encouraging, as this is a small town, not renowned for technology.

When I parked on the street when first arriving last night, I used my G1 tethered via PdaNet. But, there's no 3G here, so it was _really_ slow. Pretty much just good enough for checking for urgent email. So, boondocking (just parking wherever and living wholly off-the-grid) will probably be limited to weekends, and possibly 3G-enabled areas. PdaNet also only runs under Windows, so I can't run Linux natively while using it; which means I have to virtualize for development (our software is a Linux/UNIX-only product).

<comment><USER15> Satellite internet is probably the way to go if you want reliable coverage. Though WiFi/3G might be cheaper, it's also much more unreliable.

<http://www.groundcontrol.com/RV-Internet.htm>

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't have four+ grand just sitting around to get started with satellite Internet. I spent nearly every penny to my name in order to buy the RV. I was unable to get a loan (banks hate startup founders with spotty income history; even with a mid-700s credit score and up to 40% down, no bank was interested in lending me money), so I had to pay cash and buy an older/smaller coach.

I have suspected for a little while now that most the US has good enough WiFi availability that I'll be able to get by without satellite. And, when I have 3G, my phone is an acceptable source of connectivity.

<comment><USER15> It's something to keep in mind though when/if you do get the money. The thought of parking an RV in the middle of Yellowstone miles away from any people or cell towers and hacking away is, I must say, very appealing. One of these days...

<comment><USER16> you dont need internet to hack.

<comment><USER17> To be honest, I do. I am constantly referring to online notes, docs, manuals, blog posts, and every other source of information you could name. I make at least 3 or 4 programming-related searches an hour, I reckon.

While I will readily admit I am probably one of the more clueless programmers here, I doubt I'm alone in this...

<comment><USER18> I imagine with a bit of planning of what I'll be working on I could probably download the vast majority of docs and manuals I need in advance. Sure it wouldn't be 100% coverage, but good enough to keep me hacking. Then every time I completely hit a wall I'd make a note of what I need and move on to some other part of my project. Next time I have internet I'll look up everything on my list and repeat.

<comment><USER19> I was thinking of doing that. But does it work in real life conditions?

One advantage would be that I won't be tempted to compulsively browse HN and other news web sites.

<comment><USER16> Yes, it does. It will slow you down by a bunch at first. Then, you will learn to keep local copies of documentation and how to access them. Then, you will get to know your debugging tools better. Eventually, you will become more self-reliant. Remember, people used to program on displays that showed one line at a time.. and there was no google to query for answers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> >People often ask where it's legal to park an RV. And the answer is, generally, "Wherever you can park your car, I can park my RV; as long as it fits, doesn't obstruct signage or right of way, and doesn't spill into another space where spaces are marked." The law in most of California is that vehicles under 45 feet and used for non-commercial purposes can park anywhere any other consumer vehicle can park.

Interesting. This is not the case over here in Europe (at least in the parts of it I've been to). You get fined if you sleep overnight in your vehicle outside designated areas (like camping sites, specially RV-dedicated parking lots, etc., all of which you have to pay, of course).

EDIT: of course you can _park_ everywhere, I was referencing "sleeping" part of the article.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sleeping in the vehicle is another matter; but since it's not obvious someone is sleeping in the vehicle, I suspect one can get away with parking legally and sleeping illegally enough of the time to make it worthwhile (if a ticket for sleeping in the vehicle costs, say, $75, then as long as you don't get ticketed more than once every three nights, you'd come out ahead over an RV park). There are other benefits to RV parks, including the convenience of not having to run the generator for power, not having to dump and refill water, and probably having better Internet, so I'll probably end up staying in parks about 75% of the time. I'm paying $41.50, including utilities and Internet, per night here in Morro Bay, and this is a pretty pricey area; my house in Mountain View cost $71.50 per night, and didn't include utilities or Internet. So, I'm still coming out way ahead.

<comment><USER21> $71.50 per night is upwards of $2k/mo. Although it doesn't seem unreasonable for a free-standing single-family home, it strikes me as a little high for only a thousand square feet.

Then again, I'm cheap^H^H^H^H^Hfrugal.

More to the point, I'm curious if you priced out what a 250 square foot apartment in Mountain View would cost, if it's even available.

<comment><AUTHOR> _More to the point, I'm curious if you priced out what a 250 square foot apartment in Mountain View would cost, if it's even available._

I'm not doing this to save money, though that will be a pleasant side effect. I wouldn't be willing to live in 250 square feet, if I couldn't consider the whole country my living room. I agonized over all of the stuff I've had to give up, and I'll probably do a post about it, entitled something cheeky like, "Remembrance of Things Past" or "Requiem for my Things".

The loophole isn't that it's super cheap to live in an RV (though I guess it can be); the loophole is that I get to travel _all the time_ while living my mostly normal life, running my company, cooking in my own kitchen, sleeping in my own bed, etc. and as a huge bonus, I'll probably spend about $800 less each month on housing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Here's some solid gold info about parking your rv...

<http://vagabonders-supreme.net/nitecamping.htm>

</comment><comment><USER23> As an alternate version of this, has anyone ever considered buying a semi tractor with sleeper and taking just enough long-haul work to break even, while spending the rest of the time tooling around? Practical? I had though that with mobile internet and a driving partner you could actually be pretty productive on the road as well.

<comment><USER24> This sounds like an awesome/crazy way to pair program.

<comment><USER23> I know, that was kind of what I was thinking!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Congrats, I want to try the same thing, but on a boat instead

</comment><comment><USER26> A brother-and-law and his wife retired some years ago, and now spend several months every year RVing. He mentioned a book popular among RVers called _The Next Exit_. (When first mentioned to him by an RVer who was a good deal older, he thought it dealt with end-of-life issues; it doesn't.) You might find it useful. They also travel with a motorcycle, to be able to park the RV for a few days and take side trips.

</comment><comment><USER27> _San Francisco is even colder, darker, and wetter than Mountain View..._

Not true. Yeah, that's how winter is here. Winter sucks everywhere. The other eight or nine months of the year are non-stop sunshine and warm-to-cool temperatures, unless you live in one of the undesirable neighborhoods of SF with bad fog.

Anyway, neat idea. I approve.

<comment><AUTHOR> I came here from Austin, Texas three years ago. Winter in Silicon Valley is not an acceptable season for me. Even summer is a pale imitation of the real thing (though I do love the smell of Jasmine which permeates everything during spring and summer here).

For people from cold climates, the bay area is very mild, and lovely, year- round, but I'm a total wimp in the cold. I hate the cold, and I've been miserable the past couple of months in Mountain View. So, I'm heading south.

<comment><USER27> Fair enough. I hear this complaint a lot from people who came from warmer climates. Myself, I was born and raised in the Midwest, where we had a very normal distribution of seasons. So I find SF's weather very agreeable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Living 365 days a year in a mobile home (caravan) in the UK is illegal, because the occupier must be registered to pay council tax in a local authority, for which caravans do not apply.

Perhaps this is why the UK is floundering in the technology/start-up field?

<comment><AUTHOR> You kinda have to "exist" here in the US, as well, for federal income tax and other such things, but you can have a post box or registered mail agent to act as your "home address".

And, I'm not sure if tech startups, in general, require the ability to move from city to city. I do think it'll become a lot more common, though, amongst startup founders, now that Internet has become so close to pervasive. Most of the YC founders I know are already extremely mobile, and generally travel a _lot_ more than the folks I know in other fields (except touring musicians, perhaps).

It also remains to be seen whether I can be productive as a tech startup guy while traveling. I suspect it'll work out fine, but there are plenty of variables in the year ahead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Any idea what is the price of living on a RV vs sleeping on cheap motels?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll be posting an analysis of my expense projections (and the real numbers for the few days I've been living in the RV) sometime today. I haven't run the numbers for a hotel, as it wasn't a feasible option for me. If you don't mind staying in less interesting places most of the time, you can probably do it for roughly the same. But, high rent cities will _probably_ kill your budget (though, there are usually cheap hotels in every city, if you don't mind living in a ghetto and in a crappy hotel). Since I can theoretically just park somewhere (Wal-Mart, neighborhood street, etc.) in even the toniest of locales, I can probably visit the highest rent places in the country without paying a fortune to do it. We'll see how realistic that turns out to be over the next year, as I visit Los Angeles, San Diego, Austin, Atlanta, New York, Toronto, San Francisco (I've lived down in the bay for 3 years, but never really properly experienced San Francisco), etc.

Weekly stay hotels would also probably bring your expenses down a bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm curious, which three guitars do you have?

<comment><AUTHOR> An 80's Schecter strat, a 1987 G&L L2000 bass, and a 2001 Gibson J-45. I also still have a 1969 Fender Malibu acoustic, but once I get it restrung and setup again, I'm going to sell it. I currently also still have my 1984 Marshall JCM 800 100 watt twin combo, which failed to sell, even at a ridiculous discount off of current eBay prices, before moving day (this surprised me, but Mountain View isn't exactly a music town), so I have to get it sold, as well. I'll probably craigslist it when I get down to Los Angeles. I'm gonna replace it with a little 5W Blackstar or something similar.</comment></comment>


Brave Passes 10M Monthly Active Users, Sees 19% Growth Since 1.0 Launch - <AUTHOR> https://brave.com/brave-passes-10m-mau/ <comment><USER2> I think Brave's potentially most important (and least certain) contribution to the world is its automatic micro-payments system. It's genuinely innovative and the only viable alternative that anyone has proposed to ads-based funding for smaller sites. It's also, by nature, incredibly hard to bootstrap. But I really hope it gets real traction and ends up standardized and/or copied by other browsers.

<comment><USER3> IMO it misses the point. I don't want ads. Pay me for seeing ads may be better than just see ads but what I really want is no ads. For now I block them. This way I get to see nearly no ads. I can't get my head around why I would let some ads trough to earn some bucks. It totally missing the point.

What we really need is a way to pay for content so content creators can survive without ad revenue. The internet must transit to a market where people pay for goods and services just like on literally every other market. There is money and goods/serviced and they get exchanged. That's how it should be. Now we have ads and a third-party in between which severs itself plus another party the advertisers. Brave removes the third-party (kinda) but leaves the advertiser in the game. Why? No one needs them to be part of a goods/service <> money exchange.

There is an open W3C standard that can be used for micro-payments it's called ILP. Not bound to a currency. No token. No scaling problems because it tires to run everything "on the blockchain". It's just a protocol it can be used with any token or currency.And Payment providers must compete against each- other just like it should be in a healthy economy. (At time of writing there seem to be only one payment provider (Coil.com) but that's just because someone has to start.)

<comment><USER4> > we really need is a way to pay for content so content creators can survive

So, just buy more BAT and you dont need to see ads. other people may not be able to afford paying, so they 'll prefer to see ads

> but leaves the advertiser in the game. Why?

The printing press, radio and TV always had ads, why? becuase it's the most natural fit, and it allows them to have more / better content. ad-supported content is not going away. A world with more options is always better

<comment><USER3> By buying BAT I support people getting paid for watching ads. Also and open door for ad-fraud. Bat browser doesn't know if a real user watches the ads. Do we really need more click farms and all that crap?

The solution to all this is so obvious; the third party must be removed from the equation.

Local "fee" (ad monetized) prints are horrible. Never used Radio so I can't say anything about that. TV however has become more and more ad cluttered and low quality over the last decades to the point where I completely stopped watching any TV several years ago.

Ads may fit in newspapers and in TV programs. But when newspapers and TV programs are created for the sole purpose to serve ads it just results in crap. Ads don't incentive good content. They incentive click-bait titles, fake news and an anything that maximizes the time an end user waists.

<comment><USER4> > They incentive click-bait titles

that's because in digital, google & FB are gobbling up the bulk of advertising budgets, leaving little money in display advertising to be shared by hundreds of media sites. it's not an inherent property of ads that they create clickbait, it's the need for increasingly more ad views.

<comment><USER3> The inherent property of ads is that a third-party is involved who strives for maximal profit at the cost of the other two parties. Even the nicest possible third-party can't make the deal better for the others.

<comment><USER5> Why at the cost of the other two parties? The publisher profits and the consumer gets subsidised content

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Pro-tip: Brave has built in torrent support. You can visit any .torrent or magnet link and it will load up directly in the browser, no external program needed!

Click this link from Brave: [https://webtorrent.io/torrents/big-buck- bunny.torrent](https://webtorrent.io/torrents/big-buck-bunny.torrent) (Creative Commons licensed)

Disclaimer: I integrated my WebTorrent library into Brave. Sharing this tip because not enough people know about this feature!

<comment><USER7> Wow, that's nuts! I just pasted a magnet link into the address bar, and it started playing the movie.

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:02cd53257b68fac90489850be10691df7c42e45a&dn=The+Terminator+%281984%29+1080p+BrRip+x264+-+YIFY&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.leechers- paradise.org%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fopen.demonii.com%3A1337&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.coppersurfer.tk%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fexodus.desync.com%3A6969&ix=0

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> One of the serious criticisms against Brave was that they were collecting payments for sites and creators that had not signed up and who did not want to sign up. That is they were charging for other people's content, that they don't own, under the guise that the money went to those creators when it didn't and wouldn't. Seemed a pretty serious criticism to me. Has this changed?

<comment><USER9> There where actually 2 critiques and their practice would count as fraud in a lot of countries.

#1 Money was re-distributed if donated and not claimed -> its not frozen infinite.

#2 There was no way to opt out -> its now opt in iirc

Besides that there are other critique points.

#1 Brave is controlling the add economy. They do this by blocking adds and offering their opt in add service(and gain 30% of the add revenue)

#2 Brave is using its own crypto currency to have full control over the money flow.

What additionally lowers their credibility is that they put false advertisement on their website.

This makes me wounder whats the incent to use brave.

<comment><USER10> I don't quite follow #2. BAT is an ERC20 token like any other and can be quite easily transacted outisde of the browser and outside of Brave's control.

<comment><USER9> Brave created the currency.

<comment><USER10> That doesn't equate to having full control over the monetary flow. They can mint new tokens, but since the contract doesn't have a self destruct function, it's out there on the blockchain forevermore, even if Brave were to disappear tomorrow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have been using Brave on macOS for more than 3 years now. I used Brave on Android for a while and I am currently using Brave on iOS as my daily driver. I don't use their BAT system or anything associated with that. I like their default vanilla experience and the fact that I can install Chrome plugins on Brave. I still use uBlock origin on top of their default blockers. I use the built-in Tor experience time-to-time as well.

To me, Brave is what Firefox should have been. Good UI, good defaults, fast enough, support for Chrome plugins, etc. I am slightly concerned about their future direction though (if they enforce the BAT system down users' throats).

</comment><comment><USER12> Given there's very clear monetary incentive for the company to hype their own product, and that these stats can't be externally verified [1], this is essentially just snake oil. Personally, if anything, I find the constant forced hype across media and social media to be a red flag. If your product was really both good and honest, you wouldn't need to try to force it down people's throats.

[1] [https://community.brave.com/t/why-doesnt-brave-market- share-...](https://community.brave.com/t/why-doesnt-brave-market-share-show- up-on-market-share-tracking-sites/75063/2)

<comment><USER13> >If your product was really both good and honest, you wouldn't need to try to force it down people's throats.

You do if bad products are spending more ad dollars than you. Being good isn't enough to capture the market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've been using it for a bit and really enjoying it. Mobile version anyways. Only downside is it doesn't seem to be able to autofill all my information for forms, so I switch back to chrome when I'm making a purchase on my phone or something like that.

<comment><USER15> I exported all of my chrome settings and loaded them into brave. Easy to do and all my things are working as expected.

<comment><USER4> oh cool. last version i checked i could not import my passwords

<comment><USER15> Might still be the case. I use 1Password. It's easy to upload passwords from chrome to 1Password fwiw

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Any details from verified creators or Brave directly regarding revenue? Even if it's tiny right now, it would be great to hear some data from anyone giving it a real go.

<comment><USER17> They did an AMA recently on Reddit where they go into the payment positives in detail, of course they skipped the negatives like they are playing ads on your desktop outside of the page.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/7l4033/transcri...](https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/7l4033/transcript_of_ama_with_brendan_eich_ceo_of_brave/)

<comment><USER18> You can opt out of the notification ads.

<comment><USER10> You have to opt _in_ to the notification ads in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Been using it for a month. Have made a little over $2. Loving the BAT stuff.

Also loving profile switching which for some reason I never used in Chrome but now use in brave like mad because I have several clients with separate gsuite / google cloud platform environments.

<comment><USER20> Does profile switching work similar to Firefox's Multi-Account Containers?

Or can you only be "viewing" one profile at a time?

<comment><USER21> On Firefox you can have multiple containers on a single window. On brave each profile has its own window.

<comment><USER22> I don't think they can be compared. Brave profiles (well, Chrome profiles) are basically different browsers. They share nothing. They can have different settings, they can run a different set of addons, etc.

<comment><USER4> you cann probably do the same on ff and chrome by using different data directories (running with --profile or --user-data-dir options)

<comment><USER23> Yeah you can create as many profiles as you want with firefox and run independent processes with the correct command line args but most users aren't advanced or tenacious enough to set it up. It would be nice if they had a slicker implementation like chrome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I installed it on my personal laptop due to constant crashes with chrome that debug logging didn't help to solve. Brave suffered similarly so I stuck with Chrome. I do extension development so when I saw that they used the same store I was pleasantly surprised. I couldn't test my extension behaviour though, because the app it enhances was having issues.

I'll give it a go on the PC I'm using for work(family) until I upgrade. Free BAT!

</comment><comment><USER25> I recently wanted to play an online game, but hardware acceleration on Firefox on Linux doesn't work very well (Firefox on Windows is fine though - I've used the exact same hardware to play on Windows and it was butter-smooth), so I wanted to get a Chromium-based browser for that usecase. Ended up picking Brave, and it's worked well for that.

Still using Firefox as my daily driver.

</comment><comment><USER26> I might have been interested, but Chrome-based is out of the question, and I'd prefer to avoid any ties to advertising too - and it's not like other options aren't available...

<comment><USER27> AFAIK it is based on Ungoogled Chromium

<comment><USER26> "Ungoogled Chromium" seems like an oxymoron ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> So many fake accounts here just wow. HN should genuinely ban Brave posts

<comment><USER29> How are you determining this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I've looked at verify a site that I control through Brave to start earning some BAT tokens but I'm really not to keen to have to also give PII (government photo and a selfie) to their only payment processor Upstart.

I'm not familiar at all with this company and I'd really rather not go giving them data just to earn revenue on my site that Brave has taken away by blocking ads.

Could someone who's more familiar with Upstart assuage my concerns? Are they legit, have they got a good track record?

<comment><USER4> all crypto exchanges require such documentation, or worse. you can keep the BAT there or perhaps transfer it to another exchange to exchange for another crypto. but always, regulatiosn and stuff

<comment><USER31> They require PII because they can, not because they are legally required. To accept cryptocurrencies and allow people to withdraw them into a wallet, you do not need to verify their identity, unless the tokens are exchanged to fiat on the platform.

There are companies that are more established and popular than Brave which do not ask you to hold your ID next to your face and take a selfie in order to withdraw donations to a cryptocurrency wallet.

<comment><USER4> i havent tried them all but afaik, the ones that are in US or EU and which allow fiat <-> crypto transactions do

<comment><USER31> Of course, but Brave should allow creators to withdraw their tokens, without converting it to fiat.

Not even users can withdraw their tokens without submitting an ID, let alone creators: [https://cryptobriefing.com/brave-cash-out- bat/](https://cryptobriefing.com/brave-cash-out-bat/)

It's actually worse than PayPal, where you can receive and withdraw money up to a certain amount a year without submitting an ID.

<comment><USER4> oh ok i see. i should be able to withdraw to any BAT wallet, that's weird. but knowing how much legal scrutiny there is around crypto-enabled companies, i m not surprised to see restrictions

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Looks like it has a builtin Tor based browsing model. Not just private window (incognito) mode, but Tor based incognito in addition.

(been using it for an hour now, it is kind of neat)

</comment><comment><USER33> > As part of the Brave 1.0 launch, Brave Rewards is now available on Brave for > iOS, which contributed to the app's 27% growth in the past month.

I'm a happy Brave user but the "Rewards" are a gimmick. I've made a dollar a month at best for clicking their amazon/intel/VPN ads. But the actual browser serves its purpose well as a well supported and actively developed de-Google'd chrome with pretty good ad blocker baked in.

</comment><comment><USER34> I've been using Brave for a while, maybe a couple of years. Its default ad blocking doesn't work 100% of the time, so I've installed uBlock Origin. I don't use the BAT functionality at all, but I think one of the main advantages to Brave (and likely any Chromium-based browser) is that you get all of the same fast, consistent rendering, plus all of the same Chrome extensions will work without any extra effort.

</comment><comment><USER35> I recently switched to an iPhone from android. Brave seems like the only browser that allows me to block ads without some sort of external plug-in app. I miss having ublock on iOS. But brave seems to do the trick for me and its place.

<comment><USER36> Braves filter is much more granularized. Cookies get blocked. Specific scripts get blocked. I love it.

But it's webkit and I like Firefox.

<comment><USER35> Same here. I'd love ad blocking on firefox in ios but it doesn't seem to be an option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Love the innocent "received very positive press reviews"

It remember being force to read about Brave in any article about the web, especially when the click bait title actually mentioned its competition.

Untrustworthy, and not just In their business model.

</comment><comment><USER38> Brave is the best thing to have happened on the web for a long time. I've used it since it was in early beta, really happy how far along it's gone.

</comment><comment><USER39> I wish it was easier to get a constant sync between devices for bookmarks, but other than that, happy user here.

<comment><USER40> Yeah, I enjoy using it but I use 4 different devices throughout the day and not having sync and the clunkiness of its sync (sometimes it doesnt work at all for me on my home network between desktop/laptop) actually pushed me back over to Firefox yesterday when I got a new laptop.

I also finally got sick of the ads popping up as system notifications, which are far more distracting to me than regular ads, so I disabled that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I use it currently but do not care about rewards and other nonsense features, just about ads getting blocked.

<comment><USER42> To counter all those throwaway accounts created to praise Brave, I have to say that I have no intention to use it because it's based on Chromium. Single- culture is bad even if your intentions are good. I never used Chrome either and have lived through ups and downs of Mozilla since 2002 when I ditched IE6.

I wish Firefox tech was easier to integrate into other browsers, so that we could have a more balanced ecosystem.

<comment><USER43> I don't want to accuse anyone of astroturfing, but the comments in this thread seem to be eerily positive and very marketing-y. Maybe it's my skepticism of everything crypto-related being incredibly biased one way or another.

<comment><USER44> Disclaimer: I've been using/testing Brave for the last few years. I've seen it evolve from what was basically a proof of concept running in Electron to what it is today.

I believe if you care to do some research, you'll see that the Brave team has put in the work to be taken seriously.

I get why people are skeptical, especially in this day and age. But the concept for Brave and disrupting the surveillance capitalism known as ad tech goes back to 2013; Brave is not a johnny-come-lately thing[1].

This was started by Brendan Eich, the same guy who created JavaScipt and who started Mozilla which gave us Firefox; it's not like he's someone who doesn't understand how this stuff works.

[1]: [https://basicattentiontoken.org/the-road-to-brave-one-dot- ze...](https://basicattentiontoken.org/the-road-to-brave-one-dot-zero/)

<comment><USER45> Every potentially unpleasant Brave feature is easy to disable (and often by- default disabled). Is is very good at ad-filtering, snappy and responsive, stable, can be audited (opensource)... and the underlying ways to provide for creators/publishers (and also people liking/needing advertising) are clever and disruptive.

Brave is worth a try.

I'm not paid for this (and there is no 'conflict of interest').

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Are there any sites that are only accessible with Brave?

Like a site that has popups with "You are unable to view content without Brave browser" ?

To make it work, brave would need to support something extra besides html/js that other browsers don't support.

</comment><comment><USER47> It would be cool to use [https://www.orchid.com/](https://www.orchid.com/) (when it's ready) with the Brave browser. Tokens all the way down!

</comment><comment><USER48> Interesting browser, but dear devs we are not in 90s -just a pc for net- browsing at home - and I am talking about the lack of sync of extensions/bookmarks.

</comment><comment><USER49> As long as brave android and brave browser doesn't natively support YubiKey 2FA its a no no from me bruh.

</comment><comment><USER50> Would be curious on how much their Joe Rogan is responsible for their Q4 spike.

<comment><USER4> he s advertising brave?

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> It's a great browser, I love that tor is integrated and 1 click away.

</comment><comment><USER52> Does anyone know if the mobile version is a wrapper around safari?

<comment><USER53> Yes, because that is the only possibility.

<comment><USER54> Safari is not WebKit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Tor browser works for me.

</comment><comment><USER56> Wow. Actual user oriented and ground breaking innovations. This is the future. And it's beautiful. I'm impressed. Mozilla now looks like a dying swamp.

</comment><comment><USER57> Remember how there used to be pro-gay fried chicken and anti-gay fried chicken? Now we've got an anti-gay web browser. Amazing how the market provides. What's next? An anti-Jew web browser? An anti-black web browser? The only thing I can say for sure is that the next radicalized web browser will also feature blockchain.

<comment><USER58> Am I missing something? Why is Brave considered anti gay?

<comment><USER59> Because Brave's CEO is Brendan Eich.

Fair or not, this is exactly what I think every time I read about Brave, and truth be told, also the reason I haven't tried it out.

<comment><USER22> Don't forget to disable Javascript on your browser too.

<comment><USER59> Not sure if you replied on a wrong comment, but I do have JavaScript disabled by default with uMatrix.

<comment><USER4> i think they re referring to the fact that Eich created Javascript too

<comment><USER59> Right, I see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> pity that firefox is not innovating as much

<comment><USER3> They teamed up with Coil which sets on an open standard named ILP. We don't need more walled gardening. All relevant Browsers support it alredy. W3C is behind ILP. Doesn't need it's own Token. Supports Fiat an Crypto.

<comment><USER60> Most major browsers support the Web Payments Api, but Firefox still has it behind a feature flag [caniuse]. The Web Payments API does not enable micropayments by usage. The W3C is absolutely not (yet) behind Interledger Payments (ILP), Coil's proposed spec. You can determine this from the fact the unofficial draft spec has giant red watermarks saying "UNOFFICIAL DRAFT", and the following disclaimer:

> This document is draft of a potential specification. It has no official > standing of any kind and does not represent the support or consensus of any > standards organization. [draft_spec]

It is being discussed on the W3C's Web Incubator forum, which is promising but not an endorsement by the W3C [wicg].

The Firefox addon, which acts as a shim until they can get native support in Firefox, may well be in partnership with Mozilla (I couldn't find anything about it), but the partnership would most likely be in very early stages. When I click on the link you shared to Mozilla addons I get the warning:

> "This is not a Recommended Extension. Make sure you trust it before > installing."

It has around 350 users, which includes people who installed the add-on but didn't setup payment.

In summary, the tech is promising but browser support is a long ways down the road.

[caniuse]: [https://caniuse.com/#feat=payment- request](https://caniuse.com/#feat=payment-request)

[draft_spec]: [https://webmonetization.org/specification.html](https://webmonetization.org/specification.html)

[wicg]: [https://discourse.wicg.io/t/proposal-web-monetization-a- new-...](https://discourse.wicg.io/t/proposal-web-monetization-a-new-revenue- model-for-the-web/3785)

<comment><USER3> The Payment Request API is something completely different. Coil is about webmonetization see [https://webmonetization.org/](https://webmonetization.org/) Ah and ILP stands for Interledger Protocol not Payment it's a Protocol

W3C is a consortium (That's the C in W3C) anyone can join and become a member and join the different work groups to push a new technologies. ILP was originally created by Ripple and got further developed by Coil. Both are members of the W3C. W3C isn't some kind of web-overlord to puts a stamp on things that they like. The consortium creates it they shape it and they approve it. Everyone can participate but the driving force comes from the companies who use these technologies. They are the ones who want to shape it. But as long as a tech isn't widely adopted it will never get the recommendation status. Even HTML5 existed for at lest 6 years before getting recommendation status in 2014 but in 2011 every mayor browser had 95% HTML5 covered already. Getting IPL to a W3C REC is a very long term goal not something people need to wait for to use it.

Nonetheless it should be obvious that this whole tech is at the very start, far form perfect and may or may not change the web as we know it today. Still comparable to the Brave tech and I think it tires to solve the problems instead of re-create different versions of the same problems.

<comment><USER60> I assumed you might have been referring to the Payment Request API when you said "all major browsers support it" because that isn't true for ILP. Thanks for the correction on the acronym's meaning.

You're right, Coil is a member of the W3C [members]. You're also right that W3C approval isn't necessarily necessary for something to become implemented.

However, when I hear "the W3C is behind ILP" I (and I assume many others) interpret that to mean the W3C as a consortium has taken some step towards creating a standard, or even that the consortium has issued some statement that they hope to do so. I don't think that most people would interpret one of the W3C's 400+ members proposing something and putting it up on a domain they bought as the W3C being behind it.

HTML5 is a great example of how tech becomes implemented and standardized in the modern era. HTML5 exists because Apple, Google, Mozilla, and Microsoft agreed on it (through the organization WHATWG) and then implemented it. HTML5 was implemented through an even more centralized process, I wouldn't call getting something pushed through by the major browser members something anyone can do just by putting up a good spec.

I agree completely that a W3C spec isn't something people need before they can use the extension shim, of course. All I meant to respond to was your claim that browsers and the W3C were behind IPL. A company called Coil is behind IPL.

[members]: [https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Member/List](https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Member/List)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Brave is one of my favorite browsers (I'm using it right now) X5 better than Chrom x100 better than IE

</comment><comment><USER62> That is bullshit. Unless a trusted third party verifies this claim, it must be considered marketing lies and manipulation to encourage bandwagoning.

</comment><comment><USER63> Brave will be the next browser. No doubt about it. It is made by a genius.

<comment><USER64> I hope you are correct as it deserves to be.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: I came across a copied HN: Hacker Next. Why is HN copied? - <AUTHOR> www.pkuosa.org<p>I know some people create apps that make reading HN easier, but a google search of pkuosa seems to reveal nothing of that sort. It looks like a cheap knock-off, which begs the question: why would anyone create it? <comment><USER2> I had come across a few other than this earlier. Scam!

</comment><comment><USER3> It even has a login form. Phishing?</comment>


NoScript is harmful and promotes Malware - angry-hacker https://liltinkerer.surge.sh/noscript.html <comment><AUTHOR> Glad i never used it, it always appeared fishy to me.

And not only because of the fact that 90% of its users had barely a idea what the extension was supposed to do other than magically deciding what bad and what good JS is.

<comment><USER2> NoScript blocks all JS by default. At least, that's what it does on my browser. The only pages that load JS here are the ones I have explicitely added to the whitelist. The rest gets no JS (or Flash or Java for that matter), unless I add it (most of the times this is temporary).

It claims it can detect XSS attacks but that's not the main reason I have it installed. I've used NoScript for the past 5 years or so. I've tried disabling it and running only with uBlock (AdBlockPlus previously), but the truth is that in my case it simply doesn't work. At any given time, I have 20+ tabs loaded (more than 100 just sitting there), and there's just way too much JavaScript cruft on most sites out there. NoScript is the middle ground between completely disabling JS and having Firefox consume too much RAM for no apparent reason. If a site requires more than 2-3 external sources of JS to display any useful information then I usually just close the tab (and then I yell at the kids playing on my lawn).

More on topic though, I'm not affected because I run on Linux, and uBlock catches the ad anyway. Has anyone notified the author that his site serves malware ?

<comment><USER3> good point. i did not.

also you are clearly part of the 10% that know why. most installations ive seen did not use the whitelist approach and assumedbit ships with a good blacklist.

btw: chrome unloads tabs. especially pinned ones seem to be WAY less ram heavy when unused. i dont know about firefox tho.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Any good alternatives for NoScript?

<comment> angry-hacker Usually, people suggest uMatrix. But it's a lot more than just NoScript and probably takes longer to make it work the way you want. In general, it gives you total control what your browser is doing.

<comment><USER5> uMatrix looks heavy duty but effective. I'd never heard of it before--it looks like it could replace my user-string randomizer extension as well as Noscript and uBlock, which makes it worth a strong look. I've already found some tutorials that make it look a little less intimidating. An upvote didn't seem like enough of a thank you for posting.</comment></comment></comment>