Feedback on our startup: a personal shopping service - <AUTHOR> http://clayvalet.com

<comment><USER2> I hate this modern trend to trick users to sign up: on the first page, pretend all will be easy and peachy, no sign-up necessary. As soon as you enter anything, the evil "sign up first before you can see anything at all" pops up.

What I am saying: I saw a "sign up" form. Not very impressive, seen those about a zillion times before.

Edit: not saying you can't require users to sign up eventually, but please show me SOMETHING about what benefits to expect before I sign up.

<comment><USER3> We only require you to sign up when you're submitting a personal shopping request (i.e., engaging people to do work on your behalf). Looking at other people's requests and reports is entirely free to unregistered users.

Thanks for expressing your frustration: we need to design that part of the user experience better. Our conversion goal is getting people to sign up and submit a request. We don't want people to abandon the page because they feel tricked into signing up.

<comment><USER2> I also tried recommending something to a user in the box to the right, and also ended up seeing a sign-up form.

The first thing I tried was to enter something into the "shopping request" form, but I don't know yet what it is supposed to do. So I don't know that it will make people work for me, and hence I don't appreciate the sign-up form. If you require the sign-up before I can do anything meaningful, please show me what to expect in some other way (like a movie).

If I am not allowed to do something, don't show me the option to do it- please!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like the site - at first I was a little put off because I thought I needed to register to see anything but then realized I can still see other people's requests/answers.

The colors seem a little dull to me in this "Web 2.0" world - I think if you make the design look more lively it 'll increase the appeal of the site.

Also, are you you are allowed to use the images you are using? I have no idea what the Amazon TOS are.

<comment><USER3> Thanks, glad you like it. Dull colors, and you're not the first to say that. Hmmm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> One small nitpick, but it always bugs me: don't rely on browser resizing for images! Especially for really small thumbnails. This is what I see in Firefox:

<http://www.clutterme.com/users/alex/thumbs_unresized.png>

This is what I could see if the images were resized before being sent to my browser:

<http://www.clutterme.com/users/alex/thumbs_resized.png>

(I resized the middle two thumbnails from the original images)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, that's clearly subpar. We'll have to do something about it soon, but it's not quite our top priority yet (report quality and site navigation are).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Do you manually make recommendations for each request or is there some sort of natural language parsing algorithm that you've built? If the latter, then really cool this has potential..

<comment><USER7> How is it scalable? Also: do you not plan on using ad revenue? As a consumer reports-ish site it seems like ad-fare might damage your cred (read: your entire product).

<comment><USER3> We show ads to users who aren't signed in. We're experimenting with affiliates, but we're careful to put in affiliate tags after recommendations are generated.

If ads and affiliates become a serious concern for our users, we'll ditch them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think it's neat, but it seems like something that would exists as a B2B licensed product, rather than a consumer-facing tool.

<comment><USER3> If you know businesses interested in licensing a version of ClayValet, please send them my way.

<comment><USER7> I'd just start setting up meetings with major online retailers. Especially ones with offline components.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When I view this request, for a monitor, you are recommending a laptop: [http://clayvalet.com/r/an-lcd-monitor-with-dimensions-of- at-...](http://clayvalet.com/r/an-lcd-monitor-with-dimensions-of-at- least-22/f5e44b40-d6bc-012a-7b37-123136003df3)

<comment><USER3> True. The older a report, the more likely we are to have 'misfire' recommendations. We still have some, but they're getting much less frequent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like the idea, too -- neat!

Perhaps include a field where an inquirer puts a price range of what they are willing to spend (including tax and shipping) would be helpful for you to select something a gift that the person inquiring can afford.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the suggestion. You know, we've gone back and forth on offering a variety of more structured forms. In this case, it probably does make sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like the idea. More details about how you make money would make for better feedback.

<comment><USER3> We plan to charge for a premium version of this service (underway).

<comment><USER10> Did you consider using affiliate links as well?

<comment><USER3> We're showing some affiliate links (when the recommended merchant happens to be an affiliate), but we're concerned about possible misperceptions of bias.

<comment><USER10> Good point. Post on your progress, I'm interested :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> if you did language parsing you'd be in for a big buyout from someone like amazon.

<comment><USER3> If I had a working AI, I'd be sitting pretty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Very good idea. I would touch up the design using better colors and that's about it. Huge potential.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! Now all we've got to do is execute.</comment></comment>


Meaning and Pointing - <AUTHOR> http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/10/01/meaning-and-pointing/ <comment><AUTHOR> Very thoughtful writing here about how to navigate "information space" and how people cope with a ridiculously fast-moving world.

 _In navigating this nauseating landscape, we need fixed points that do not exist. This points to a salubrious [health-giving] role for both_ bullshit _and_ absurd conflict _. Fighting about politics, sports, or religion, or believing in harmless bullshit like the persistence of personal identity or Newtonian mechanics, may play a major role in keeping us at home in reality._</comment>


US Coding Website GitHub Hit with Cyberattack - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/search?q=US+Coding+Website+GitHub+Hit+With+Cyberattack

<comment><USER2> OK?

<comment><AUTHOR> The WSJ paywall link doesn't work for most HN readers. This one does by following a google search referer.</comment></comment>


The Ulam Spiral of Primes - <AUTHOR> http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2010/06/the_surprises_never_eend_the_u.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+scienceblogs%2FCyKN+%28Good+Math%2C+Bad+Math%29 <comment><USER2> You are going to see a pattern along the diagonal because every other number is even and never prime (excluding 2). So the only way for two primes to be touching is along a diagonal. Given that and our brains tendency to group items which are closer together as being related, anything along the diagonal will stand out more and appear to be a pattern. A more interesting picture would be one where all of the even numbers are omitted.

<comment><USER3> All the odds would look like a full checkerboard, not like these diagonals. The fact that some diagonal lines appear to be favored over other nearby diagonal lines of odd numbers is still interesting.

<comment><USER4> Of course it's interesting. There's no such thing as an uninteresting number. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interesting_number_paradox>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From <http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PrimeSpiral.html> :

 _This construction was first made by Polish-American mathematician Stanislaw Ulam (1909-1986) in 1963 while doodling during a boring talk at a scientific meeting._

Awesome. My new excuse for all those doodles in my engineering notebook: valuable, valuable mathematical research.

</comment><comment><USER6> My friend Peter made a poster of the Ulam Spiral that includes the Python code used to generate it: <http://imprompt.us/2010/ulam-spiral-take-2/>

<comment><USER7> That's my friend Peter, too! He's wicked smart.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I believe this was also shown briefly in the movie Pi. At least, I think that's where I recognize it from. Great movie about finding patterns in numbers and pareidolia.

<comment><USER9> It really is. One of my favourite movies. Highly recommended.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> _[These spirals have] been cited by some religious folks as being a proof of the existence of God. Personally, I think that that's silly; my personal belief is that even a deity can't change the way the numbers work: the nature of the numbers and how they behave in inescapable. Even a deity who could create the universe couldn't make 4 a prime number._

Amen to that.

<comment><USER11> So, pushing this thought a little further, I'd say such a (or any) deity and us have at least this one thing in common: looking in amazement at those primes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> We invented the idea of Prime Numbers. They're an arbitrary creation. As are patterns in them. Random is -NOT- the same as even distribution. Patterns are inevitable. Las Vegas makes a fortune on people who don't understand that. If you flip a coin a hundred times, you'll see patterns in the result. People are good at seeing patterns.

<comment><USER13> This is wrong. Humans _discovered_ prime numbers. They are not an invention. They fall naturally out of the integers, and would exist regardless of whether humans did or not. Prime numbers are are some of the most fundamental objects in all of mathematics, and the fact that you can find them on diagonals in these graphs probably indicates a pattern that we can't explain yet.

<comment><USER14> The question of whether math is invented or discovered is far from settled. I know next to nothing about math, but a quick google search for "math created or invented" brings up so much controversy I find it unlikely that it's been decided. See Mathematical Platonism and its Opposites by Barry Mazur (p. 19 in: <http://www.ems-ph.org/journals/newsletter/pdf/2008-06-68.pdf>). He says it's The Question that won't go away.

<comment><USER15> Indeed. Further, at the risk of soun ding too phiosophical, this invention/discovery, Platonist/constructivist debate hinges on the fundamental notion of existence. And, as with most fundamental notions, the obvious soon ceases to be so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> if you're like me - more physics than math guy, it's the same Stanislaw Ulam of Teller-Ulam design fame.</comment>


Ask HN: How to prepare for a potential pandemic-related recession? - <AUTHOR> Pretty much what the title says. Any important factors to keep in mind compared to "normal" recessions? <comment><USER2> Try not to be in constant contact with people, and try to preserve the resources you have in case wherever you are gets quarantined</comment>


Why China launches its rockets over land, not water - <AUTHOR> https://www.inkstonenews.com/politics/why-china-launches-its-rockets-inland-not-coastlines/article/3008604/? <comment><USER2> If hit by rocket debris, I do not believe Chinese people have standing to sue the government for damages, per Chinese law. Take away people's civil rights, and you can launch rockets from just about anywhere.

Saudi Arabia and much of the middle East is like this too, where the government can get away with just about anything, expect too lazy to work on rocket science</comment>


The Dawn of the $1B ICO - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@gaetanconsulting/the-dawn-of-the-1b-ico-a0486f6587a2 <comment><USER2> Dangerous speculation.

This trend of rich-quick schemes on the back of ICOs is getting crazy out of hand.

Overselling tech that doesn't exist yet (and may not ever) is only going to benefit the exchange platforms.

Crypto may see a "netscape" moment but I doubt it will be off of the KiK coin or whatever else is being peddled as the coin of the day.

Everytime I read one of these articles I can't help but think of the early scenes in Wolf of Wall Street -- don't be the poor bastard getting oversold on penny stocks.</comment>


Take the visual Turing test - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20905-take-the-visual-turing-test.html <comment><USER2> okay, I like the idea, but that Turing test is messed up. I scored 38% human on it. Maybe because it's written in British English, but I really answered the way I would answer anybody.

My unscientific analysis is, this ain't no Voight-Kampff machine, or I'm a skin job.</comment>


Bitcoin breaks 30 USD - <AUTHOR> http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD <comment><USER2> I think most people think the only reason bitcoins are useful is that they're not controlled by a government. However, I've recently started using bitcoins for some tiny transactions and found out something I didn't expect: They're EASY PEASY to use... much easier than papal, credit cards, or even cash!

For those of you who don't know. A bitcoin "bank account" can be conjured out of thin air using randomness and some crypto algorithms. It consists of only two numbers, a public "bitcoin address" and a "private key". (kinda like an RSA key pair).

The moment you've created these two numbers, you can say to someone "hey, send your $$$ to my address". Then, any time in the future you can withdraw money out of the account via your private key. This last step (withdrawing your money) is actually the ONLY step that requires any real effort at all (installing software on your PC, or trusting an online wallet site) and that's STILL super easy.

EDIT: I think I ended up sounding too much like a cheerleader in this post... I'm talking purely about easiness from a theoretical standpoint. In the real world, there are clearly still many obstacles making bitcoins a PITA to deal with.

<comment><USER3> Whenever I engage with BTC, "easy" is the last thing that I experience. Let's say that someone wants to start using bitcoin: it's as simple as downloading the software, double clicking on the icon, and... waiting 24hours or _more_ for the block chain to sync, while the i/o volume on their disk goes through the roof.

Once you finally accomplish that, you can purchase some bitcoins, which involves... this: [https://support.mtgox.com/entries/20490576-Withdrawals- and-D...](https://support.mtgox.com/entries/20490576-Withdrawals-and-Deposits)

A few days later, you finally have BTC in your wallet, so it's time to start your bitcoin client again and use them. You double click on the icon and... wait 30min to 1hr for the block chain to sync.

Finally, you're ready to send them. Let's say you want to buy some music online, so you send BTC to an address that was generated by the site you're purchasing from and... wait _50 minutes_ to get enough verified transactions before they finally send you the music.

All of this would be completely impossible on a mobile device.

There are plenty of ideas for making bitcoin more usable, but they all unfortunately involve mitigating the strengths of the bitcoin as a concept.

<comment><USER4> Blockchain.info gets you a free wallet. Signed client-side so they can't mess with it. You don't need to run the "client" (which is really a "node") at all. The fact that this is not communicated well is a communication problem more than a technical one.

localbitcoins.com if you want to buy some from anyone in the neighborhood.

<comment><USER3> The thing that makes bitcoin different than other online payment systems or virtual currencies is that it's _distributed_. That property, however, is also what makes it difficult to use.

It's true that if you re-centralize things by trusting someone else with your wallet, or outsourcing block chain verification to a central party, then it can be quite usable.

From what I can tell, nobody is entirely comfortable with the direction that's headed, which is why there's a lot of handwaving about things like javascript- based cryptography, which just doesn't work.

localbitcoins is cool, but a friend bought some BTC off me the other day, and it took over an hour (for the above reasons).

Don't get me wrong, I think all of this is really interesting and amazing in a lot of ways, but not "easy peasy" as the parent commenter was saying.

<comment><USER5> > javascript-based cryptography, which just doesn't work

LOL... Blockchain.info has over 120,000 users which disagree with you.

As the old saying goes, "the dogs bark, but the caravan goes on".

<comment><USER3> Please see any of the very many recent in-depth discussions about the security of webapp-based cryptography. Sure, it "works" in the sense that it's very easy to use, but it is by no means secure.

I'm sure all of those other "online wallet" services that lost or disappeared with everyone's BTC also had plenty of users.

<comment><USER6> Moxie, given your background in cryptography, do you have any ideas on how the Bitcoin community could improve the user experience without compromising security?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is much, much, more merchant acceptance, transaction volume, etc. for Bitcoin compared to the last time there was a big rise; not to mention production is only half of what it was before; ASICs are here/on the horizon, YC has funded a bitcoin startup, it's mentioned basically daily in the blogs of major publications, etc.

It is also worth taking a look at a log-scale chart to see that the rise isn't _quite_ so steep as before: [http://www.bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#tgSzm1g10zm2g25...](http://www.bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#tgSzm1g10zm2g25zvzl)

Clearly a lot of speculation going on here; but I very strongly doubt we will see a crash anything like we saw last time (how many people were preaching that the end of bitcoin had come?); though a significant correction when people start taking their profit seems almost inevitable.

Anecdotally, a number of people I have been telling to buy bitcoins for _years_ now are finally like, "well okay, I am just going to wait till it drops to $xx or so (where xx is ~40% less than whatever it is at the moment we have the conversation).

<comment><USER8> "I very strongly doubt we will see a crash anything like we saw last time"

This assumes that all crashes are built the same. In fact they are not. An an example, increased usage and profile also greatly increase the likelihood that governments come in and panic investors.

<comment><USER9> Another thing to worry about is something better coming along. As soon as it does, bitcoins will crash and never recover, since their only worth is they are better than anything else for making anonymous secure trades. If Ripple or soemthing else begins to take off, that may change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The rising price just makes me laugh. I "invested" $1,000 in BTC during the early hype as it was approaching $32.00. I told my co-workers how cool of a concept it was and that my investment was sure to pay off with a skyrocketing price.

After months and months the price drops and drops. My $1,000 is worth $200. I go through a ridiculously long process of proving my identity to Mt. Gox and Dwolla just to get real USD back at 1/5 their original value.

Now if only I had kept it in there for the long haul, I'd have my $1,000 back.

It's precisely this volatility that personally makes me skeptical of it truly reaching a critical mass of any sort.

<comment><USER11> You made the cardinal mistake of investing: you bought high, and sold low. Many rookie investors make this mistake because they are unable to control their emotions when the value of their investment takes a downturn. It can be nerve-wrecking to imagine all your money evaporating.

Fortunately, your mistake cost you only $800. So it was actually a good learning experience. From now on, buy low and sell high. For example, the best time to buy is when a (recoverable) disaster or sensationalized story cause a financially strong company's stock price to dip. That's the perfect opportunity to buy some of that stock.

<comment><USER10> What is high and what is low is of course speculative.

When investing in the stock market I of course use that basic logic by analyzing the KPIs of the securities. This was less of an investment and more of an experiment in modern technology, prompted by some skeptical comments from my friends. For that reason it was more like purchasing a lottery ticket.

My $1000 lottery ticket didn't perform well, but due to my real investments paying off well over the years, I can handle the loss without much thought. Win some. Lose some.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This reminds me of the great article by Mencius Moldbug on monetary restandardization: [http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2011/04/on- mone...](http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2011/04/on-monetary- restandardization.html)

"If Bitcoin becomes the new global monetary system, one bitcoin purchased today (for 90 cents, last time I checked) will make you a very wealthy individual. You are essentially buying Manhattan for a quarter. There are only 21 million bitcoins (including those not yet minted). (In my design, this was a far more elegant 2^64, with quantities in exponential notation. Just sayin'.) Mapped to $100 trillion of global money, to pull a random number out of the air, you become a millionaire. Wow!"

<comment><USER13> My guess is that it's more likely to be another cryptocurrency that becomes the standard. Once the right people figure out how to be the main beneficiaries. Also, I'm not sure that a depreciating currency is good for society as a whole, since it encourages hoarding, rather than investment.

<comment><USER2> I believe this question is hotly debated among economists. I think deflation is probably fine: In the end, money isn't any good if you don't spend it, so hoarding has a natural limit.

<comment><USER14> >>In the end, money isn't any good if you don't spend it

The money that you hoard, invest and which grows itself is the best kind of investment.

I know of a few people who saved through their life to buy real estate and rent it out. The next generations have practically slept through their lives without ever working and yet continued to live like millionaires.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm interested to see it pass $32, which should have symbolic significance if nothing else (the peak happened at $31.91 and crashed to $10 days later).

</comment><comment><USER16> Well, this is going to be an interesting watch!

The fundamental issue is that holding is what increases the value (because, really, it is an exchange medium; the world still ultimately prices pegged to their respective local currencies, no matter what any bitcoinite insists), and as the value increases, you are incentivised to hold.

It is going to be interesting to see what happens when the bubble bursts (and it will, to _some_ extent), and how big it gets, as most of the bitcoins held will probably be owned by users who have been through a crash before. This could mean we are only just starting the bubble-- increased confidence may let it grow far beyond the previous one.

</comment><comment><USER17> So the 10 btc I bought a couple years ago for ~$2 are now "worth" $300 USD. Do I sell them now, or wait 20 years until they're worth more?

How do you know when to wait longer, and when to sell? Its not like a company where you can at least get some information on their past and future performance, whether they are growing or shrinking, etc.

<comment><USER18> Well to be honest if you cash out now all you have is $300, which is a fantastic rise but not a lot of money.

This is the way I see it, its only a days earning or even less, so I would hold on to it for the next decade as a experiment and see what happens.

Would you pay $300 to be in on this game for the next 10 years? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Whenever BTC spikes like this I think of the first pizza sale a couple of years ago:

<https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137.msg1195#msg1195>

Probably the most expensive pizza in history, in hindsight.

</comment><comment><USER4> 1) BTC is a perfect fit for porn websites

2) Porn websites, for some reason, have not gone BTC yet

3) Pornographers are a tight knit community. When a couple go, I think they will all go to stay competitive

4) Google how big the porn industry is.

<comment><USER20> Point 1 is not entirely true; sites of that nature rather like recurring billing, which bitcoin doesn't do out of the box.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Are there any POS systems that use bitcoins? Any other way in which small transactions can be conducted en masse with BTC?

<comment><USER22> Yes. BitPay has one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It somewhat a surprise for me, it was a pretty quick rise. Reminds me of 2011, I wonder if it will crash the same way.

<comment><USER24> I think the present time is completely different from the 2011 bubble. The range of services offered have grown dramatically and the Bitcoin protocol has shown it's resilience.

<comment><USER23> I agree. I had few sales now on bitmit.net, I already migrated a bunch of my long term fixed price listings there.

I list like old xbox 360 games

Some PC hardware

Other stuff I have lying around

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I love bitcoins, easy to use, no middle man, quick. I can travel with them yet nobody can take them from me.

</comment><comment><USER26> Didn't it hit $20 like a week ago?

Bubble?

<comment><USER27> The first ASICs started shipping recently. This made bitcoins harder to mine (for anyone who doesn't have those ASICs, which is most people). This also demonstrated that bitcoins are here to stay, since people have made large investments in hardware that basically doesn't do anything but mine bitcoins. So the perceived future value has skyrocketed.

<comment><USER16> Some people believe in the success of bitcoins. They bought custom hardware. This proves bitcoins are going to be a success.

Circular logic at it's finest!

<comment><USER27> That's true of _all_ commodities and currencies.

Some people believe in the success of gold. They invested heavily in the future of gold. This proves gold is going to be a success.

Some people believe in the success of US dollars. They invested heavily in the future of US dollars. This proves US dollars are going to be valuable.

Edit: ok so to be clear, it's not just wishful thinking at work, but the fact that people are _working_ toward making bitcoins successful and stable that makes them successful and stable.

<comment><USER28> > Some people believe in the success of US dollars. They invested heavily in > the future of US dollars. This proves US dollars are going to be valuable.

You realize that you're sorta making his point? US Dollars are not going to be successful _because_ some people have "invested heavily in the future of dollars." But that's the reasoning given 2 posts up that was poked-fun at in your parent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> BUY!</comment>


The hothouse academies offering kids a shot at K-pop stardom - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/05/asia/kpop-schools-south-korea-intl/index.html <comment><USER2> With all the corruption and drama behind k-pop it doesn't seem smart to be advocating it.</comment>


Show HN: Static Fire. A Git Based Static Blog Engine - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cusiman7/Static-Fire <comment><USER2> Ok, a static site generator. Nothing against that one, I think every programmer will write its static site generator some day. I know I did myself.

But since there are thousands of them out there, why would I want to use this? It doesn't have any differentiating feature.

</comment><comment><USER3> I can appreciate not wanting to stray outside the python standard library, but this would be more appealing with a proper template engine.

</comment><comment><USER4> interesting project, i made something similar with node this summer break: [https://github.com/geekodour/gitpushblog](https://github.com/geekodour/gitpushblog)</comment>


Why every company will soon be 'AI first' (Medium) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@myaibrand/why-every-company-will-soon-be-ai-first-cad908f70781 <comment><USER2> I completely agree, especially when we redefine AI to mean roombas and lane assist.</comment>


Ask HN: How to develop a HIPAA compliant app? - <AUTHOR> Building a mobile application that will communicate personal health data between the user and a cloud service, what regulatory measures need to be taken?
The data is "protected health information" (PHI), so the app + cloud service definitely need to be HIPAA compliant. What all needs to be done to make sure the system I build passes the grade, and how would I get the system officially certified? What about FDA approval (if the PHI includes medication info)?
I've seen a few helpful sources of info like [1, 2], but is there a comprehensive checklist of requirements and best practices that I haven't come across? Given what's at stake  and the repercussions I don't want to leave any stone unturned!
[1] https://aws.amazon.com/quickstart/architecture/compliance-hipaa/ [2] https://www.peerbits.com/blog/hipaa-compliance-mobile-app-development.html <comment><USER2> One baseline to think about is SOC-II compliance. You'll also need training for your organization and certain designated people that are responsible for security. You'll want a third party to audit your architecture / pentest your systems. Finally, a lot of pressure will be from whoever you may be working with (hospitals, clinics, data brokers, etc) with respect to proving your security. They'll put you through their own IT and securitya audits. In terms of FDA clearance, you'll want to look into the 510(k) fast track, and look for similar systems to yours. I've worked at an algorithm oriented HIPAA complaint startup and don't know a ton, but would be happy to discuss my experience with you. email hn at funk.dog

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://github.com/truevault/hipaa-compliance-developers- gui...](https://github.com/truevault/hipaa-compliance-developers-guide)

</comment><comment><USER4> I recently went through setting up a HIPAA compliant web app. The team is small and has no dedicated DevOps so I went looking for a PaaS solution. After extensive researching and trialing, I went with Healthcare Blocks. They provide a great experience and were the only company that offered a sane price point for an early stage startup. Honorable mention to Aptible, especially their Gridiron product that we will eventually use.

I think another viable route is hiring a contractor to build out your environment for you. We got a quote from an AWS contractor and it was reasonable for our setup, but ultimately we really wanted a PaaS. Unless you're an expert in HIPAA and the cloud platform you're looking at, it's not something I would recommend tackling on your own.

Remember that there are a lot of non-tech parts of compliance to consider as well such as training, physical security, security assessments, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks I'll definitely look into these! In your research and trialing did you compare TrueVault (mentioned in other comments). Digging around today I'm rather impressed, but haven't tried anything yet.

And if you don't mind, what do you consider a "sane price point"? I'm assuming that price is relatively small compared to the actual AWS hosting fees you pay on top of the PaaS, no?

<comment><USER4> I didn't try TrueVault because I didn't want to integrate it into an existing application. Certainly seems like an option worth exploring if you're into it.

For HIPAA compliant hosting, I would say a sane price point is below $1000 a month for a single server and database. Only Healthcare Blocks, Aptible, and EngineYard came in below that. Other providers like Heroku and Datica started around $3000 a month. With Healthcare Blocks the monthly cost is all in, there are no additional hosting fees. That said, for a small app hosting fees are small. The AWS consultants forecasted the actual server costs around $200 for the year I believe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> FWIW, Amazon's quickstart doesn't reference its WorkDocs product, which is now "HIPAA eligible."[0] I'm not sure about any over-and-above pricing, but the core service pricing is reasonable, if it fits into your workflow.

[0] [https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2017/07/amazon- wo...](https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2017/07/amazon-workdocs- achieves-hipaa-eligibility-and-pci-dss-compliance/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I was looking at developing a HIPAA compliant app a few years ago I was going to use [https://www.truevault.com/](https://www.truevault.com/).

Ultimately I decided against doing anything that requires HIPAA compliance.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the TrueVault pointer, that's a great resource for info! I was going to followup asking your thoughts on using their service vs doing it yourself, but reading the dev guide posted by @jameslk I came across this:

        We think this comment from Hacker News sums up the technical debt required to roll your own HIPAA compliant infrastructure quite accurately. This was completely unsolicited and is not from a TrueVault customer.

            "[Building our own HIPAA compliant infrastructure] took upwards of 1,000 person-hours to figure out HIPAA-compliance issues. This will continue to be an ongoing cost for us, because HIPAA is an ongoing law and it changes sometimes. It takes substantial auditing time and money." — jph

<comment><USER6> y, I don't think it's practical to DIY.

Although Patio11 did it with AppointmentReminder it sounds like basically their HIPAA plans were ran the same as their regular plans as far as servers/security. From what I read he just offered the agreement, etc to the higher paying customers.

There are lots of interesting apps that could benefit patients and doctors. HIPAA is just scary to tackle as a small company, it's way easier just to choose another niche.

People always say selling to the medical field is difficult too.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's the best dog-friendly area near YC?  - <AUTHOR>

My cofounder and I are thinking of moving our startup to the bay area. I have a 90lb german shepherd and we live on the edge of a vast wilderness that spans northwest MT and north ID. We hike a few miles every day and its been the best possible lifestyle change for me as a programmer. After living in Boston for a decade, I don't want to subject my pup to suburban/city life without easy access to the outdoors. Does anyone have suggestions for where to look for housing? <comment><USER2> Lots of space/trails in MV itself. Check out the Stevens Creek Trail -- it runs very close to YC and goes for a good 3/4 miles. You can find lots of people walking, running with their dogs. If you want a big house with a big lawn etc. you can move to Los Altos, lower prices with huge lawns. Also, if you just drive about 20-30 mins west from MV, the hills with lots of greenery are there, another 15 mins drive will take you to the Ocean.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks!</comment></comment>


Snap will stop promoting Trump's account after finding tweets incited violence - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/3/21279280/snapchat-snap-remove-trump-account-discover-promotion-incite-violence-twitter <comment><USER2> What a bunch of BS. Don't get me wrong, I'd be just as happy if he was deplatformed everywhere but these social media companies coming out now and acting like this just started or is new is just annoying (insert surprised Pikachu). No one was willing to take any real steps until after Twitter's fact-check/hidden tweet. What took so long?

<comment><USER3> > No one was willing to take any real steps until after Twitter's fact- > check/hidden tweet. What took so long?

I'm not sure what caused Twitter to change after so many years of taking heat for ignoring their own rules. But once Twitter has shown he's not untouchable, other platforms now have a proof that it can be done, and a precedent to point to.

Similar thing happened with Alex Jones. He seemed unstoppable until YouTube kicked him, and soon all other platforms followed. Interesting twist that previously no platform wanted PR shitstorm for being the last one keeping the persona non grata. This time Facebook is clearly betting on being Trump's platform after everyone else shows him the door.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For the person of that calibre, he might tweet directly on his .gov website.

Try to get that domain, Twitter ;-)

</comment><comment><USER5> I understand that Trump is a bit of a special case, but I find it kind of worrying that getting in trouble on one platform can consequences on a platform owned by a different company entirely. Especially when you consider some companies don't put much work into preventing accidental bans.[0]

      [0] https://9to5google.com/2019/11/09/google-account-bans-youtube-emote-spam-markiplier/</comment>


Ask HN: What can we do with our messaging platform startup? - <AUTHOR>

Small background: We are the team that founded by ex-Telegram developer and we try to create something like "Slack". When we started, Slack wasn't so cool and only last 2-3 months people started to ask us "how you differ from Slack?".
We created the high-performance platform that could deliver messages at worst networks fast. We can handle the good amount of simultaneous connections at once (sorry no numbers) and deliver messages at very high rate. We don't solve any specific problem; this is just good messaging platform that works on Android, iOS, and Web. Platform means that we can easily integrate, customize systems.
For now we burn all our money (~100k$), and we are even not started to sell something. We are tech guys, and we can't do sales for now and we don't have money for this. This strategy is my (as CEO) huge mistake, of course.
We think that we can: 1) Raise more money. But without any traction? We have just good dev team in Russia (and we want to leave this country). 2) Fire all team and start selling by founders and make some basic traction. 3) Wait for luck.
All this cases seems to be unreal; no one gives us money for now, and I can't give something to investors. It is hard to sale in our domestic market because of business culture and current economic situation (during winter we lose 50% of our money just because of currency exchange rate changing).
What can we do in this situation?
P.S.: Right now we are preparing our sources to release, and they will be available in a week or two.
P.S.S.: Anyone can join experimental chat by opening URL: https://quit.email/join/a8086c23dbaf9f0f7c5003844774e61dfef6d571dd37baa0c28d48fe5012171a <comment><USER2> Hey guys, head of engineering at Layer here. If you actually try to go down the road of building a platform for other developers then you are very quickly going to discover that you need to build a bunch of other stuff totally separate from the core messaging service. You are going to need solutions for getting data in/out, dashboards, billing systems, sample code -- on and on. Plus you have to provide an SLA to close any meaningful business. And you'll need a pro sales team to get those opportunities interested and through the funnel. We are 35 people and I could easily keep another 5 engineers fully loaded to attack the roadmap as aggressively as we'd like. And we've been at this for 2 years. There's a lot of surface area and you need to be very good on both technical and sales dimensions to make a platform play work.

My best advice for you is to either find a unique value prop in the consumer space where you can perhaps gain a foothold and access virality or focus on finding a nice home for your engineering team and technology. I've seen a lot of advice here about how you should start consulting to create runway. This is terrible advice and you should face reality. Nobody is going to build an app and a business on top of a messaging platform that is a part time project of a handful of developers without any runway. It's just not a rational business decision and nobody who is capable of paying you real money would make that call. You are in a market with existing well funded players that are rapidly evolving their product and addressing that market through sales and marketing. You either have to build something that you can give away for free and generate traction that you can raise money against or you need to focus on selling the core assets that you do have: the people and the tech. You may want to reconsider releasing that code if you want a shot at an aquihire outcome. Best of luck.

<comment><USER3> agree with blake here. we're also working on a similar product, but we had customer base from the start with actual use cases, which lead to bookings/revenue early on. you have to look at from the customers' perspective to see which problem you are actually solving and how you are creating value/saving cost for their business.

in the age of over-supply, it's definitely never enough to just create technology and expect it to sell automagically. go talk to your existing/potential customers and get their feedback. start with a local optimum product catered to their needs, and generalize towards global optimum from there. even Einstein started with a special relativity and not general relativity. ;)

to offer a realistic advice, unless you have a customer-development cycle in place with a target customer base (who has at least signed a MOU/LOI/Purchase Agreement/etc.), I'd stay frugal until you have something like this, then raise money. and yes, I'd definitely stay away from consulting kind of work if you are serious about your business/product. this is a short-term way of staying afloat, but once you build your company's cycle/rhythm/culture around b2b human-labor business, it's hard to turn that around towards a product- driven business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Slack is extremely expensive for large "community" chat rooms. If you could handle a several-thousand user room and offer full functionality for a fraction of Slack's price you might have something that could get some traction.

<comment><USER5> Could you describe a usecase for that?

<comment><USER6> Let's see:

\- Large open source projects

\- MOOCs with many students

(Taken from discussion of this post from yesterday):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9754626](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9754626)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah! I saw this post today and we thinking about building something for communities.

May be some app for easy find right group chat (Android global group, hacker news group, SF Local Tech group, etc...). May be someone know such apps? I try to find it, but no one tries to implement this.

<comment><USER7> I was going to suggest contacting freecodecamp.com and seeing if they would like to partner with you to develop a product that suits their use case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Anyone can join experimental chat by opening URL

Why are you asking for my phone number just to try a demo? You are creating unnecessary friction IMO.

<comment><USER9> yes, I wanted to try the service, but stopped when it asks for phone number.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> IMHO:

Short Term:

\- You need time => consult to get money => to get time

\- Be careful with this path => make sure it stays only short term

\- if possible consult in the same space of your product.(best case: your clients pays your future platform development)

Mid Term:

\- You think like a developer atm - unless you plan to sell to developers this wont solve your core problem (understanding the market)

\- tech can be completely useless with one usecase or extremely valuable with another. Figure out who could be potential customers (it's product thinking not dev thinking, best case: you learned this in your consulting period)

\- when you figured out who "could" be your customer make sure it's actually a customer you can/want to deliver for. If you sell to enterprise it will be a sales operation and you need to learn this.

In any case: Head up and be confident. Things are not as bad as they seem and there will be a good end (maybe not directly afterwards but in the years to come)

</comment><comment><USER11> > We don't solve any specific problem;

This is your major problem. You built technology without a specific business case. Now you are trying to turn that into a business. This is a terrible position to be in for 2 reasons: You will be trying to fit problems to match your solution. Your solution doesn't have the nuance or context associated with a specific problem, which is usually required to have a compelling product.

Of the options you list, #3 is just silly. No one is coming to save you. #2 is your best bet. Then again, I have no idea how you got $100K of funding for not solving a problem, so maybe you can convince those suckers to re-up for #1 again.

Building technology is not the same thing as building a business. You guys blew $100K on technology, and now have no money to make a business. And now your are entertaining the idea of open sourcing the one resource you do have: your technology.

Stop all this. It's tough, but fire everyone. You can't pay them and taking more money with no idea how to get more is, at least in my opinion, unethical. Go do consulting in spaces where this technology might be applicable. Understand what problems they have and try your best not to assume your messaging technology is the solution. If you are a lucky, you will find an actual problem that you can repurpose some of this technology to solve. Then and only then can you re-build this as a business.

</comment><comment><USER12> Consider option: 4) Start doing consulting work. That way you can survive as a team and gather resources for the next phase. Whatever it will be, productive dev team is an asset and it can be worth something.

PM me if you are willing to explore that scenario and consider relocating to Poland.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't know this market well. But I can suggest three tests that you should apply to any potential niche you're considering.

"Jobs-to-be-done" (JTBD) is useful analytical tool here. A "job" is a thing that someone is trying to accomplish. Harvard's Theodore Levitt expressed it well in this quote:

"People don't want to buy a 1/4 inch drill. They want a 1/4 inch hole."

It reframes the discussion away from features to customer objectives.

As you look at your platform, think about different market niches and the things they're trying to get done. Here are three tests to apply as you consider a given niche.

1\. Is it an actual JTBD for a large enough target niche?

This is the most basic test. Do people actually have the need that your product/service addresses? Not only that, but can you characterize the the number of potential customers with the JTBD?

2\. Does your product/service/idea meaningfully improve on the incumbent solution(s)?

This is a tougher test. How does your idea outperform the current way customers address the JTBD? You need to have a clear view on this. And the improvement needs to be significant, not just a little. Customers will overvalue their incumbent solution's benefits, and undervalue the new product's benefits.

3\. Is the total incremental cost _to the customer_ of your idea less than the total incremental value to the customer?

This test is the toughest. You need to consider monetary costs of course. But there can be many other switching costs as well. Loss of existing data, new time required to learn, new formats that have upstream and downstream impacts.

My take is that successful products can get to clear yes's on these three tests. But it takes some work, experimenting and seeing where your idea falls short if it's not getting yes's on the three tests.

</comment><comment><USER14> I have very simple advice: Get people using your product and ask them what they like/dislike about it. I wouldn't try and compete in the messaging space as it is saturated. In enterprise there is Slack and Hipchat, and in the consumer space there are so many I won't name them. You can stay in communication, but change your product a bit:

> Provide simple encrypted messaging, like GPG but for people who have no > desire to manage their own keys/ aren't tech savvy. This could work if you > want to stay in enterprise.

> Target things regionally. Maybe you can provide a product that works better > in Russia than Slack or use some advantage of knowledge of the culture to > make a great product for a specific region.

You really need to be out talking to customers and potential customers. I don't think making a simple messaging app will work in this market, you need to find a competitive advantage. You only find this by knowing it already or talking to customers.

edit: or you could pivot into customer support chat communication.

<comment><USER15> _" I wouldn't try and compete in the messaging space as it is saturated"_

I don't think so. I think there's lots of room in enterprise chat space for differentiated products... it's not just slack or hipchat. E.g., a on-premise hosted chat with actual native clients for OSX, Windows, iOS, and Android would find buyers. IRC has traditionally been the solution for this but IRC doesn't have a uniform mobile client experience and the backend integrations (notifications for github, gitlab, bug tracking systems etc. etc.) are not as rich and diverse as slack/hipchat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > during winter we lose 50% of our money

so, "winter is coming" might really be a thing there, huh!

> P.S.: Right now we are preparing our sources to release, and they will be > available in a week or two.

Don't worry about anything for now. Just do that release, having those doubts before a release is fatal. Just focus on the release for now. Things will be different after the release.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't believe in releases. Just release meant nothing usually, isn't it?

<comment><USER17> No, focus on getting the release out. Then focus on what comes after that. Keep your head down for now.

<comment><USER10> the problem is that developers tend to develop when things go south

but usually the "development part" wasnt the thing to worry about in first place

(same with bizdev who go to networking events or arrange meetings, designers who redo landing pages or ceo's who spend time chasing investors)

my thoughts a bit longer explained: [http://klinger.io/post/36585126176/the- founders-lie-about-co...](http://klinger.io/post/36585126176/the-founders-lie- about-comfort-zones)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Have you looked at enterprises?

AFAIK Slack and Hipchat are cloud based, which is fine for some but not all enterprises due to obvious security concerns, and if you can make self- contained and easily deploy-able system that can integrate with enterprise IT systems, particularly authentication, you may have an interesting use-case.

Healthcare is another big space, where there are several startups looking at messaging where Slack etc. won't work due to HIPAA compliance and other specific scenarios.

P.S. Didn't try your demo, since it wanted phone number, and sorry we don't know each other well at this time to trust you with it. :)

</comment><comment><USER19> Take a look at layer.com. Perhaps you could find something that sets you apart (low latency and lots of connections, plus a good price for Android devs, for example) and market to developers.

</comment><comment><USER20> You have a platform, build an fun app that uses it. For example: ask yourselves what twitter would be like if it allowed people to exchange markup or bytecode that defines applets instead of 140 character texts? What is the most application you can ship in 32 KB of data? Yes, Kilobytes.

Or just make a clone of this for mobile: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Palace_(computer_program)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Palace_\(computer_program\))

</comment><comment><USER21> Publish your code on a github repository and become a platform as a service. People need to adopt your platform as a foundation for anything. At the same time offer messaging as a paid add on service with a revenue model tied directly to use. Eg. * > 100,000 messages per month is 1.00 per month. Sell your support and integration services.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm keen to understand exactly what parts of a 'messaging stack' you guys have built. Feel free to drop me an email (details in my profile).

</comment><comment><USER17> Perhaps you could provide your messaging platform as infrastructure as a service for startups?

<comment><USER23> Here comes another question: what's the difference with [https://layer.com](https://layer.com)?

<comment><USER17> If the technology is 10x better, there doesn't need to be much difference. There's room for more than one provider.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Offer reliable voice/video conferencing supported on all platforms.

<comment><AUTHOR> We can provide voice/video with 3rd party services and it works good on stable networks, but does it add enough value or we need to spend half-year on optimizing webrtc?

<comment><USER5> The keyword is "reliable". Solve this problem and you have a product.

Perhaps you need to think bigger than your own project, but develop something that others can incorporate into their product. Designing a basic chat service is relatively easy and will become even easier in the future with programming languages like Erlang/Scala becoming more popular and widespread. (Chat programs are often the "hello world" programs of these languages in tutorials). But designing a robust video-chat service is something that not many companies can pull off.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good chat application is not like hello world app. You can build something like chat, but it doesn't have most required features and performance.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nokia throws spanner into Google's plans for VP8 codec  - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/nokia-throws-spanner-into-googles-plans-for-vp8-codec-standard-7000013067/ <comment><USER2> Florian's earned his money on this one by inserting the factually accurate yet misleading phrase "64 granted patents and 22 pending patent applications" into almost every story about this.

I also note the linguistic irony of accusing a rival's technology of being "proprietary" while at the same time claiming ownership and veto rights over it.</comment>


Netflix raises prices ($8.99 to $9.99) and offers $7.99 online-only plan - <AUTHOR> http://www.netflix.com/GiftPurchase

<comment><USER2> Pure speculation here, but I'd bet that this is a direct response to Hulu's price drop in Hulu Plus when opening to the general public[1]. The selection on Netflix is better (well, larger at least), but unless they can at least match the streaming delays that Hulu has, i.e. days vs. seasons, I don't see them winning the online only battle.

It is worth noting the device support advantage, however. Netflix has a well established list of supported devices. This makes it much more convenient than Hulu for the average person, particularly with the amount of households that own a Wii and the relatively low price point of the Apple TV.</comment>


I have an idea for an iPad app...constructive criticism needed - <AUTHOR>

I have an idea for an iPad app and I am about to let a professional developer implement the idea.
But I am unsure if my idea is worth the amount of money I am going to spend on it. The developer thinks it's a great idea - but he's obviously likely to be biased.
Is there any professional developer out there who would be willing to provide some feedback on the idea?
- Is my idea worth fighting for? Do you think it's an app that you would use yourself? - How much would you expect the implementation to cost?
Any help and constructive criticism would be much appreciated. Just let me know in the comments and I'll contact you if you're interested.
Cheers -sabertoothed (from Hamburg, Germany) <comment><USER2> Please please please realize that it is highly unlikely that you will make any money off of this app, no matter how great the idea is.

It could be the next Flipboard and be an app that I could end up using daily and you still probably wouldn't make even on your investment.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right. But I do have a good job and won't quit it in order to develop the app. I won't risk much. A lot of money, yes, but nothing my happiness depends on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd be happy to give an opinion or two! russ at indyarmy dot com

</comment><comment><USER4> I'll give an opinion. See my profile for credentials and contact info.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, Arn. I'll send you an email within the next few days.</comment></comment>


Over 70% of 12-to-14-year-olds in China are near-sighted - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/china/2020/01/18/most-12-to-14-year-olds-in-china-are-short-sighted <comment><AUTHOR> [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8i0chs...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8i0chsbvLGoJ:https://www.economist.com/china/2020/01/18/most-12-to-14-year- olds-in-china-are-short-sighted+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)</comment>


Show HN: Android App: Live Closer - <AUTHOR> https://www.live-closer.com <comment><AUTHOR> Good day, I have been working on a project the past few months, and recently released my Android app to help people live closer to their interests. It's called Live Closer - Cut the Commute. This will help reduce traffic, saving people time and in the end lowering our carbon footprint to save the environment.

I'm a one man, part time coder, making use of Flutter, which I started in November last year, so any help and advise how to make this work will be much appreciated. Growing a user base to allow other users to actually get results when joining is a challenge.

Please check it out and let me know what you think? Link to the website below as Google play URL gets cut off on post so please find it via website.

Thanks.

Website - [https://www.live-closer.com](https://www.live-closer.com)

</comment><comment><USER2> Tip: IMHO the name you've chosen _might not be great_.

Both words are homographs and at first glance I bet most people skipped clicking because this ambiguity doesn't draw attention to the purpose.</comment>


Free transportation for life - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/really-big-ideas-we-should-try/32eeaacc207a

<comment><USER2> "So, you're going to buy half as many cars and you're going to drive for free for the rest of your life. The punch line to all this? We could have been doing it in the '80s or '90s, and we could rush this technology to mass adoption in the next five years if we wanted."

Musk's talk at Oxford, he mentioned that one of the things enabling the current generation of electric vehicles is the latest generation of Li-ion batteries, which have existed only for a few years.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Oh yeah, EVs have very little moving parts so they will last 2x or 3x as long as normal cars. Perhaps three or four decades or 500k miles."

Do the batteries last that long? (They're about half the price of the car currently.) Last I knew, lithium-ion batteries lose capacity over clock-time. Some types lose capacity less soon than laptop/phone batteries[1], but I didn't quickly find out how much slower, nor what type of battery Tesla is using. (Do you have info?) Maybe we can't even know: lithium-ion batteries were only invented 40 years ago[2], and modern Li-ion chemistry and size much more recently.

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_battery>

[2] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#History>

</comment><comment><USER4> The Super charger stations are not solar powered, right? They have solar panels that feed back into the grid in an attempt to make then power neutral.

</comment><comment><USER5> I hope Tesla comes out with a 25k car. That would be awesome.</comment>


Ask HN: Family email - <AUTHOR> So kids are getting old enough to have own email, and I am thinking of getting own domain so they can have one address for a long time. Also, then I can administer their accounts so easier to reset passwords etc, monitor, etc.
So do tweens and teens even use email or is all SN?
And I remember getting mass emails announcing a new personal email address but no one does that anymore — but how do I transition people to my new address smoothly? <comment><USER2> If you can get a decent domain, like your last name, it would be worth it. You can't apply for a college or job or do any kind of adult business in the adult world without an email address for the time being.

There is no smooth way to transition to a new address. Just start using it, forward everything from the old address, and reply to everything from the new address. It takes maybe a solid year or so to move it all over.

Since you're setting up email for kids, it should be smoother since they really don't have a lot tied to an address right now.</comment>


A Productivity Manifesto - <AUTHOR> https://pascalprecht.github.io/posts/a-productivity-manifesto/ <comment><USER2> Am I the only one who was disgusted reading Essentialism (author of blogpost read it)? The book was so shallow even if I could read the most boring stuff I would still read it, but that book make me want to die. What was your message from the book?</comment>


Why I ditched Microsoft Word for LibreOffice and couldn't be happier - <AUTHOR> http://www.afr.com/p/technology/why_ditched_microsoft_word_and_couldn_VA5wEvmBiRkPmN23EDWnHJ <comment><USER2> A previous company adopted OpenOffice for all internal uses, and our employees quickly came to love it. We had a customer once who sent us particularly tricky documents, and eventually we gave up and started using Word to manage their stuff. They still complained at broken formatting after we'd edited their docs and mailed them back, though. The conversation went like:

Us: That's really strange. We were using a different word processor, but you're still seeing the same problems even after we went back to Word.

Them: Um, what word processor would that be?

Us: You probably haven't heard of it, but OpenOffice.

Them: Us too! Can we just send you ODT files directly?

The workflow on both ends had been to work natively in Writer, then export to .doc for passing files around. All problems immediately went away once we dropped the middle step.

<comment><USER3> I outsource some of my translation work on oDesk and ask that all of the work be done with OpenOffice. Many already have it but some need to install it. If everyone works like this, we'll have a lot more people using Open Office.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "It hasn't been feasible to uninstall Word, or abandon it entirely. Of course there are times when we need to collaborate with Word users, and perhaps a quarter of the time we work on that platform."

So you haven't ditched it at all.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've used the StarOffice/OpenOffice/LibreOffice line for a decade. The last Microsoft Office product I purchased was Word 97, and I ditched that when I retired the Windows 2000 machine.

That said, LibreOffice is still too buggy for a 10-year-old product. The article says "Writer has a couple of instabilities under Windows, such as locking up if a new document isn't saved within a few minutes." That's pathetic.

LibreOffice .doc import/export almost works now. You can usually import a Microsoft Word document, although the margins are often wrong.

</comment><comment><USER6> LibreOffice attempts to replicate the MS Word "experience", which is good if that's what you looking for, but which I find atrocious.

Do you have recommendations for a word processor which

\- Focuses on writing text documents, doesn't attempt to do everything

\- Is visual, because sometimes it's painful to go through cycle of compilation with LaTeX

\- Has a minimalistic UI that focuses on semantics; which lets you mark things as sections, titles, emphasis, etc. Fonts, colors, are handled separately within a template editor

\- Ideally, allows for real-time collaborative editing

<comment> kot-behemoth Have you tried LyX ([http://www.lyx.org](http://www.lyx.org))? It's a WYSIWYM (your first point) graphical editor for LaTeX and as far as I remember shows you a pretty good preview of your document as you're typing (your second point).

<comment><USER7> Relative to LaTeX:

Has anyone heard of professional use of LaTeX outside of the scientific fields?

I've seen a lot of good examples of the power of LaTeX but all seems ot have been made by scientists. And I tried to convince my girlfriend who is in the edition/layout field (not sure of the correct name). she already knew LaTeX (at my surprise) and she thought the examples were unimpressives. She doesn't anybody in her field using it professionally.

So I was wondering if her experience was specific or it was really unused outsite science. Any feedback on this one?

<comment><USER8> There's a lot of unprofessional behavior and software practices in the "professional" publishing field. Many authors refuse to write in anything but MS Word, and companies rely on Track Changes for version control of manuscripts.

<comment><USER9> I'm definitely not an everyday user of Track Changes, but isn't that the very use case for it, version control inside a manuscript?

The biggest caveat I've seen to its use are ballooning file sizes (meh), and (more importantly) leaking information. But I also thought recent versions of Word made it more prominent to discard tracking information when doing a Save/As.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I use Windows x64 and for the past one and a half year have kept it MS-Office clean. However my colleagues usually argue with me about this. Even If I try to explain them the advantages, they keep insist on using MS-Office even for scientific papers where I find Lyx superior. At work I installed it since I do not pay for it. At home, never even If I am on windows.

My only complaint is the lack of recent builds of Abiword/Gnumeric.

Abiword is on 3.0.0. in mingw64 in OBS. Gnumeric is even older.

These problems have to be fixed. Does anyone know where I can find recent builds for windows 7? x86/x64 makes no difference to me.

<comment><USER11> What about the following combination: First, set up a Windows based X implementation (Cygwin X, or Xming for example). Then run a stateless Linux install in a VM (maybe based off a live CD), and then set up icons on your Windows desktop to remotely launch the given apps on the Linux VM, displaying them on your Windows desktop with your local X server.

The main problems I see with this would be automating the Linux VM startup, and configuring the local icons (they would have to launch a script that ssh's into the Linux VM after checking if a local X server and the Linux VM is running, forwarding X connections).

<comment><USER10> VM is not an option for me 😦 Even calligra is dead on windows. Maybe I should consider dualboot again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I made a switch to LibreOffice when my work machine switched to Ubuntu. As the post points out, switching for everything but Excel is feasible for most users. There is a bit of a learning curve, but some things actually seem to make more sense once you dive in.

As for Excel, as tumultuous a relationship as I have had with that software over my working career, I never really appreciated its features and stability until I tried to use the alternatives. That said, I haven't tried 4.4 but look forward to giving it another shot.

</comment><comment><USER13> _We simply don 't apologise for jumping ship from MS Word. For us, the productivity gains have been irresistible._

That's awesome. I wish I could. I'm a technical writing consultant who does grant writing for nonprofit and public agencies (www.seliger.com if you're curious), and everything we get from clients and public agencies is a Word or Excel file. Everything we send out has to be in the same formats.

We're in a situation similar to the graphic designers and photographers and so on who say that everything they take in and send out has to be Photoshop / InDesign / etc. compatible. The industry has standardized around these programs and formats and perfect compatibility is mandatory.

LibreOffice is great. I've mentioned it in class (I adjunct on the side), but I can't use it.

<comment><USER14> Microsoft Office hasn't really evolved in 10 years, and even when it did (in 2007), it hasn't really evolved for the better.

I do think that there is a window opened for a competitor to disrupt this monopoly.

<comment><USER4> There WAS a window, but I think it's closed already though. Google Docs and a host of Office-compatible Android/iOS apps made a go at it, and they made headway for a while. But Microsoft went ahead and made web and Android/iOS versions of Office that are at least as good as Google Docs and the various Office for Android apps I've seen, with far better Office compatibility than anyone else can offer (since they're running the same code as desktop Office under the hood).

Meanwhile LibreOffice is fighting the last war, with a thick desktop client using some custom cross-platform GUI toolkit that looks native on exactly nothing, no web app version and no real effort on mobile[1]. And it's fighting the last war badly at that -- not even people who write articles about switching to LibreOffice can actually switch to LibreOffice because they keep Word around for compatibility with everyone else in the world. Calc versus Excel is in even worse shape than Writer versus Word.

1) There IS an Android version of OpenOffice:

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.collabora....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.collabora.libreoffice)

It's read-only and the UI is... subpar, however.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does it finally do footnotes in a decent fashion? Literally the only reason I kept a portable version of Word 2003 around during college was to do the final formatting and citations for my papers. I nearly broke down and learned LaTex instead, but that curve was just a little too steep.

<comment><USER16> That is the primary reason I keep office around for as well. No alternative offers decent footnotes / endnotes / reference without going to latex (that I have found). For something as simple as a two page paper for an undergrad class, I do not want have to use latex just to get footnotes done correctly. I would be interested to know if the latest version actually does any better.

<comment><USER17> What difficulties are you having with footnotes? I just finished working on a 200 and something page document in LibreOffice 4.3, with multiple footnotes on most pages (and mildly complicated things like re-starting the numbering for each chapter), and working with footnotes seemed pretty straightforward. I'd be interested to find out how your (and the parent poster's) experience differed from mine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What I miss, probably more as a PowerPoint competitor, is a Visual Studio/WPF- style editor with WYSIWYG and mark-up side by side.

I don't even want to think about the amount of time I spent trying to select some text I want to edit, buried under other transparent layers or empty, invisible boxes. It would make it also very easy to introduce dynamic references in the text of a textbox in powerpoint (something currently impossible!).

It wouldn't hurt the basic experience for normal users and would make PowerPoint infinitely more powerful for advanced users.

Word is less visual but this side by side approach would also be very useful. Particularly since a lot of the visual formatting is "invisible" in a WYSIWYG editor.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm not in a position to ditch Word, but I am happy to hear that there is a more robust alternative for numbered paragraphs with multiple sub-levels. Word appears to get confused when paragraphs change sub-levels.

</comment><comment><USER19> LibreOffice crashes way too often for me to consider it a remotely acceptable product. Frequently it will crash within 10 seconds of opening a document (on Ubuntu).

<comment><AUTHOR> If this is happening with the distro LO, then there's something seriously wrong with your PC or your installation. This does not happen for almost anyone else - whatever compatibility complaints people may have, LO is _ridiculously_ stable. (The Coverity cleanup was seriously worth it.)

If you can reproduce this with a given document on a different PC, you have a reportable bug.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Most people can get by with Abiword and gnumeric. I often hear people say that there is some feature of MS Office that they need and that isn't provided by Abiword + gnumeric / OO / LO.

Is there a list of these features anywhere? And are the competitors to MS Office working on them? Or are they focussed on different things? EG a spreadsheet that focuses on correctness and auditing could probably be useful.

<comment><USER21> I've noticed that none of the FOSS spreadsheets do as well with some things as Excel does.

For example if I put 1, 2, 4, 8 and I highlight that and drag it to continue the series I get different results.

Excel gets it right and provides 16, 32, 64, etc

LibreOffice provides 2, 3, 5, 9, etc

OpenOffice doesn't do any better.

I haven't tried gnumeric in the last 10 years so I can't remember what it does but I'm not optimistic.

There are a lot of these kinds of things where Excel really has polish and the others don't and probably never will because the code to make it work right is excruciatingly boring to write.

<comment><USER22> "Gets it right" is incredibly subjective, you cannot really expect a spreadsheet to run some number series analysis to see if there is some logic behind numbers except for some trivial cases (this one _might_ be one, but that's debatable).

gnumeric does simply replicate the series, you get 1, 2, 4, 8, 1, 2, 4, 8, 1, etc. It does offer a tool to fill series though.

<comment><USER23> Although I think of the powers of two as the natural completion, OEIS finds about 1600 sequences that start 1, 2, 4, 8, and are of some mathematical or cultural interest.

[http://oeis.org/search?q=1%2C2%2C4%2C8&sort=&language=&go=Se...](http://oeis.org/search?q=1%2C2%2C4%2C8&sort=&language=&go=Search)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> As a side note, I mentioned the OOXML fiasco in my poorly-written wishlist for Satya.

</comment><comment><USER25> IMHO it all boils down to habit. I switched from Excel to LO Calc and am quite happy, too, though it does feel a bit awkward and sometimes it just gets in the way. I managed writing a macro though, and it was surprisingly easier than I thought.

<comment><USER13> _IMHO it all boils down to habit_

No—it boils down to network effects and coordination. As I wrote here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9069761](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9069761) , in my business we use MS Office, our clients do, and funding agencies do. There is no easy or simple way to move everyone from MS Office to an alternative simultaneously. So it doesn't happen.

People who never or very rarely need to do document interchange may be okay with Google Docs or LibreOffice, but people who interchange complex documents on a regular basis must use MS Office.</comment></comment>


How Driverless Car Predicts Expected Movement of Objects on Road? - <AUTHOR> http://www.whatafuture.com/2015/01/06/google-driverless-car-predicting-movement-of-vehicles/

<comment><USER2> apparently deep linking is not allowed on this site.

sucky.

<comment><AUTHOR> what is deep linking?

<comment><USER2> Linking to actual content. If you click on your link it claims the page doesn't exist, you have to click the same address from the sites front page.

Basically that site breaks how urls work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes you are right. I haven't looked at that. The URL that I submit was - [http://www.whatafuture.com/2015/01/06/google-driverless- car-...](http://www.whatafuture.com/2015/01/06/google-driverless-car- predicting-movement-of-vehicles/%EF%BB%BF#sthash.QN6yCULW.dpbs)

"%EF%BB%BF#sthash.QN6yCULW.dpbs" this part is creating problem actually.

The actual URL is - [http://www.whatafuture.com/2015/01/06/google-driverless- car-...](http://www.whatafuture.com/2015/01/06/google-driverless-car- predicting-movement-of-vehicles/)

Sorry for the inconvenience that you faced due to my negligence.

<comment><USER2> That's the sites fault, not yours ;-)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Stop trying to guess display language based on keyboard layout - <AUTHOR> https://nibblestew.blogspot.com/2018/03/stop-trying-to-guess-display-language.html <comment><USER2> It seems to be contagious: Blogspot seems to be in Finnish for this particular blog.

<comment><USER3> I see the same thing with all Blogspot sites. I've always assumed it is based on GeoIP lookups, since I'm based in Helsinki.

(I'm from the UK, all my computers are configured with locale set to en_GB. Yet there are many sites, such as blogspot, which redirect me to their Finnish-versions. I'm on the verge of switching to a Finnish keyboard layout, to get the "extra letters", but I've not yet done so. I'm sure that will only make the problem worse.)</comment></comment>


American scientists unearth lost 1960s polar satellite images - <AUTHOR> http://barentsobserver.com/en/2014/10/american-scientists-unearth-lost-1960s-polar-satellite-images-worth-billions-14-10#.VD1bCUcp6oU.twitter <comment><USER2> About a year ago the Avaneya project released software that can decode the Viking Lander tapes. A few tapes conatain images that were (as far as I know) never released.

Samples: [https://gist.github.com/jakeogh/fa995a3277d500ab59b1](https://gist.github.com/jakeogh/fa995a3277d500ab59b1)

[https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Avaneya:_Viking_Lander_Remast...](https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Avaneya:_Viking_Lander_Remastered_DVD)

<comment><USER3> Can someone explain how they were able to take and send such high quality digital pictures back then?

This is amazing!

<comment><USER4> www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/fact_sheets/viking.pdf

UHF 1Kb/sec to the orbiter, also could use S-Band direct to earth at a lower bandwidth. The orbiter could buffer 40 Mb. Not sure how fast its link to the DSN was.

ed: 16Kb/sec in there too. Example DSN doc:

ipnpr.jpl.nasa.gov/progress_report2/42-33/33C.PDF

My memory was everything was first shown grayscale, and then color. Not sure if that was a ground processing thing or the lander/orbiter sent two streams. Maybe the orbiter buffered the deeper bits and sent 8bit for near-realtime enjoyment.

<comment><USER5> A 40 MB buffer on an interplanetary spacecraft in 1975 is pretty impressive.

<comment><USER6> Looks like the buffer was on tape - it would record at the speed of acquisition, and then when it was time for transmission it would spool the tape at whatever rate was appropriate for the quality of the radio link.

And it's small b, so 5 Megabytes on the tape.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find old data strangely fascinating. I actually enjoy working with legacy systems every now and then - the older the better. There's something therapeutic about carefully making sense out of old and/or poorly maintained data.

I wonder if there's a business opportunity in this area, especially for digital data. Something like a consultancy specialized in extracting legacy data and migrating it to modern databases where it could easily queried.

<comment><USER8> You might enjoy Vernor Vinge's Zones of Thought series. The recurring protagonist-ish character, Pham Nuwen, decides to become a "programmer archaeologist" \- the most lucrative job in the universe and also the job that's considered to maintain the fabric of civilization itself :)

<comment><USER9> My favorite quote is about unix and _time()_.

[http://akkartik.name/post/deepness](http://akkartik.name/post/deepness)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's pretty amazing that something pushing the absolute limit of technology in the 1960s is now something that you could bundle up, throw together as a torrent, and publish for anyone curious enough to look at it.

<comment><USER11> Not really. Moore's Law over 50 years.

[http://observationdeck.io9.com/comparison-of-lunar-module- na...](http://observationdeck.io9.com/comparison-of-lunar-module-navigation- computer-with-an-880735459)

Too bad other fields haven't progressed. Commercial supersonic flight, for example, would be nice. In 1970, I'm sure they would have predicted 2-3-5 the speed of sound by now.

<comment><USER10> To deny that Moore's law is amazing is amazingly ignorant.

<comment><USER11> Huh, didn't realize that's what I did. Are you sure that you didn't just misread what I wrote?

I thought by this point that it was well known, well documented, and well established. So, any technology influenced by it should come with certain expectations that shouldn't surprise anyone reading HN.

Now, try not to be amazed by Moore's law but by saddened by the lack of progress in other fields. There's a lot of work to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How is the data "worth billions"? That may have been the original cost, but the original cost isn't the same as the value today.

<comment><USER13> "Cost billions" would have be correct. Their value is "priceless" as the are clearly very valuable but determining that value is impossible. What is a ride on a time machine worth?

My cynical anti-govt title: "Priceless climate data that cost taxpayers billions found unopened at government climate center" Ha!

<comment><USER14> I know you're being cynical, but these weren't the originals--they were photographic images of the originals displayed on a TV monitor (!). So though what they received were unopened boxes, they were unopened boxes of poor copies. In addition, the original data wasn't used for climate research, but rather weather monitoring and forecasting. One of the innovative things about rescuing this data was to put this data to a different use than its original purpose.

I say this just to clarify that it is not the case that we launched these satellites and then never bothered to use the data (i.e., in case readers had an image of the Ark of the Covenant being wheeled into a warehouse).

<comment><USER15> >in case readers had an image of the Ark of the Covenant being wheeled into a warehouse

Damn, you got me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A bit more detail here including picture of the "data" (i.e. metal film cans):

[http://nsidc.org/monthlyhighlights/2013/04/glimpses-of- sea-i...](http://nsidc.org/monthlyhighlights/2013/04/glimpses-of-sea-ice- past/)

Which linked to this paper in the journal "The Cryosphere":

[http://www.the-cryosphere.net/7/699/2013/tc-7-699-2013.pdf](http://www.the- cryosphere.net/7/699/2013/tc-7-699-2013.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER16> 16-bit? Did they mean 4-bit?

<comment><USER17> >16-bit? Did they mean 4-bit?

This batch of recovered Nimbus images was converted from film to digital; there was another [1] where the analog data from magentic tape was digitized.

[1] [http://www.moonviews.com/2010/03/dumpster-diving-for- science...](http://www.moonviews.com/2010/03/dumpster-diving-for-science.html)

<comment><USER16> Interesting. I was thrown off by their characterization of the images as "grainy 16-bit grayscale satellite pictures" as the word grainy seems to connote poor image quality, while 16 bits of gray is excellent. Perhaps what they are (confusingly) trying to say is a very good scan of grainy film.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm confused by this bit:

"...the scientists had recorded the images on magnetic tape, played it back on a TV monitor, then snapped photographs of the TV monitor. What he had were those images, sporadically placed along rolls of film as long as the wingspan of a Boeing 787."

Can someone elaborate on this?

<comment><USER19> They did the same thing for the video from the moon. The feed from the lander was displayed on a TV in the control room,and then that TV was being filmed by a camera pointed at it. If I remember correctly it was to do with a different format than used by the US television, and lack of equipment which could covert such material in real time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> A similar stash of data data is in the libraries of the agencies that did the research for the various over-the-horizon-radars around the world. Australia's DSTO has rooms full of magnetic tapes with decades worth of ionospheric measurements on them.

</comment><comment><USER14> These data are available from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC): [http://nsidc.org/data/nimbus/index.html](http://nsidc.org/data/nimbus/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER21> the reference to dark data is interesting - I didn't know there was still so much data out there that hadn't been digitized! This kind of stuff would be great for a kickstarter campaign though..

<comment><USER22> Yes, exactly... someone kickstart this man kickstarting this "dark data" organization.

They could easily make large glossy prints of that satellite photo for rewards and make the top tier something like "Fly out to have lunch with the recovery team and get an original film tape (already recovered)".

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Google should use this data as an overlay for google maps :) I would love to watch that data on that way. Any google employees reading this? ;)</comment>


The $503 iOS Racing Game: The Expensive IAP Economics in Real Racing 3 - <AUTHOR> http://www.148apps.com/news/503-ios-racing-game-shocking-reality-iap-real-racing-3/

<comment><USER2> This article is just useless fluff. First, how many people care enough to get 100%? Do you get anything for getting 100%? If not, then the number of people who will probably strive for that and are willing to pay for everything is probably low. Second, it was said in the article, you don't need to buy anything in order to win, so the headline on HN is misleading at best.

I personally see nothing wrong with this approach. Development time is not free and when offering the game for free there has to be a way for the developer(s) to make money. As long as they allow users to beat the game without having to make a single purchase then it's all good in my eyes.</comment>


Bill Could Spell the End of End-To-End Encryption - <AUTHOR> https://www.onthewire.io/draft-bill-would-force-vendors-to-give-plaintext-data-to-law-enforcement/ <comment><USER2> Recipe for disaster right there, that is like asking for vulnerabilities

<comment><USER3> It's not like asking for vulnerabilities, it is demanding vulnerabilities.</comment></comment>


Is Big Data Still a Thing? - <AUTHOR> http://mattturck.com/2016/02/01/big-data-landscape/ <comment><AUTHOR> Seriously Matt knocked this out of the park. One of the best posts I've read about the big data industry, very insightful.

</comment><comment><USER2> Still a thing? Hell, it hasn't even really gotten started yet.</comment>


Triple-A Failure - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/magazine/27Credit-t.html?_r=1

<comment><USER2> All investment assumptions are predicated upon market conditions, which in turn depends on government policy. Given that the government was pursuing a loose monetary policy, no one expected interest rates to rise, nor house values to decrease in the short term, looking at the figures alone. If the statisticians had done a field trip or an audit, things would have been much clearer. Moody's had succeeded in the past because they were able to quantify trust. It's failure today is precisely because they failed to audit some of these loans.</comment>


How is Foursquare Going to Make Money? - <AUTHOR> http://martinizer.com/looking-at-foursquares-41m-debt-round/

<comment><USER2> How do they make money at the moment? I'd love to get hold of their data

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.quora.com/Foursquare/How-does-foursquare-make- mon...](http://www.quora.com/Foursquare/How-does-foursquare-make-money-1)

Hasn't generated much though.</comment></comment>


Doctor Calls for End to Lockdown Due "Unprecedented" Spike in Suicide Attempts - <AUTHOR> https://www.nationalreview.com/news/a-years-worth-of-suicide-attempts-in-the-last-four-weeks-california-doctor-calls-for-end-to-lockdown/ <comment><USER2> Strange that no numbers were cited in article.</comment>


Vanhawks (YC W15) – The Smart Bike of the Future Is Pretty Smart (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-smart-bike-of-the-future-is-pretty-smart <comment><USER2> Cool they are Canadian. Hope they have the sonar and turn lights patented though so they can split their business and sell add-on tech rather than a whole bike. I feel that's a much harder sell.</comment>


Cosmos is an operating system "construction kit" - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/CosmosOS/Cosmos/wiki/Develop-Your-Own-Operating-System-in-C%23-or-VB.NET <comment><USER2> The reason to have a "construction kit" for a given thing is that you are constructing a thing involving a huge amount of choices.

A programming language, an operating system and a database management system are all examples of complex, high level things involving such plethora of choices.

Programming languages have a variety of construction kits of various sorts, from Bison and Yacc to regular compilers and so-forth.

I hadn't heard of any equivalent kit for OSes or database system. Unfortunately, what's described gives the impression of producing a rudimentary system based on a few canned choices. I mean, fully producing an OS would involves generating calling conventions, device driver conventions, process convention, memory allocation methods, etc. (I'm far from an expert on this btw).

Sure, you can say "but all that's just done for you". It probably is done for you ... one particular way. But as far I know, the reason to produce a new OS is because you have some opinion how this stuff should work, usually because you're actually producing an OS to be use by some device and that device some needs and weirdness that needs to be taken into account.

Edit: Oh wait, just remembered, people are now creating "OSes" that are just app-containers intended to run AWS. If that's what you need, maybe this works.

<comment><USER3> I think you have conflated the idea of an OS and kernel. A kernel generally handles calling conventions, device driver conventions, process conventions, memory allocation methods, etc. An OS just uses a kernel which has already decided on those conventions.

<comment><USER4> Personally I would argue the term "OS" is simply not that well defined, and the readme makes no attempt to clear that up which I think leads to confusion. What actually defines an OS vs. not an OS is a pretty blurry line, and more- over when someone talks about "OS development" 99.9% of the time they're talking about kernel development. So naturally calling something an "operating system kit" that lets you "create operating systems" makes you think of kernel development.

That said, I read the whole readme linked here, and not once does it actually explain _what_ an 'operating system' is, so I personally think that's just a failure on their part in picking a name and explaining what exactly the intended use of their project is. If instead of using the term "operating system kit" they used the term "baremetal/kernel application SDK" (or something along those lines) I don't think anybody would be nearly as confused on what it is. But I'm not entirely sure that's a good name either because I'm really just not sure what you're supposed to use it for. I read the whole readme, but I'm still at a bit of a loss.

Don't get me wrong though, I still think it's a cool project, but mostly just for the code making up the 'Cosmos' kernel rather then the 'develop your own OS' aspect.

<comment><USER5> > _Personally I would argue the term "OS" is simply not that well defined_

An "operating system" is a combination of what the user sees, what developers see, and what devices see, I'd say.

If one wants to refer to the GUI, CLI, API, SDK, DDK or the kernel individually, just use those terms. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Bit of a shame an "operating system construction kit" cannot be developed without using Windows.

<comment><USER7> These sorts of comments are kind of rude. Nobody's saying it can't be developed without Windows; nothing's stopping you from building your own.

<comment><USER6> > Nobody's saying it can't be developed without Windows

The first sentence of the link: "Cosmos (C# Open Source Managed Operating System) is an operating system development kit which uses Visual Studio as its development environment."

At another point in the article: "Cosmos lets you create operating systems just as Visual Studio and C# normally let you create applications. Most users can write and boot their own operating system in just a few minutes, all using Visual Studio. Since milestone 5, Cosmos includes an integrated project type in Visual Studio and an integrated debugger. You can debug your operating system directly from Visual Studio using breakpoints."

And that's fine. Visual Studio is, as I've heard, an excellent IDE. But Visual Studio is indeed a Windows-only thing, for the foreseeable future.

In addition, elsewhere in the article it is mentioned about this project that the developers "want to make developing operating system as easy as developing Windows applications". That is clearly a bias towards the way of developing on Windows only.

And again, that's fine too.

But all this also agrees with my statement that it "cannot be developed without using Windows" in a practical sense. Sure, I could build my own, as you say, but that would be in conflict with the way the project's developers want it to work.

<comment><USER8> The project might be configured to build with Visual Studio but there are other C# compilers available. And Visual Studio is available for macOS in addition to Windows. [https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/mac/](https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/mac/)

<comment><USER9> Except, it is nothing like win32 VS. This version is based on Xamarin (Microsoft follows horrible naming conventions)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Operating System Legos"

Ouch. Please change that to "Operating System LEGO" which is more correct.

Ref: [https://twitter.com/LEGO_Group/status/502086477652959232](https://twitter.com/LEGO_Group/status/502086477652959232)

<comment><USER11> They can try all they want, but legos are pretty close to hitting "genericized trademark" status like bandaids and kleenex.

<comment><USER12> I think he means more about the pluralistic than capitalisation. Outside the US (and officially) it is a mass noun so the plural of lego is lego. "Legos" sounds as grating as "sheeps".

<comment><USER13> I'm not quite sure about English, but in Dutch, for single lego pieces we use the equivalent of "lego piece", or just "piece" when the context is clear, which pluralizes normally. If you say "I'm going to play with lego", the word "lego" is used in a more general, abstract sense, which has no plural at all.

<comment><USER12> You but you'd say "look at all that lego" not "look at all those legos" I assume?

<comment><USER13> Indeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> [https://cosmos.network/](https://cosmos.network/) The Internet of Blockchains called; they'd like their name back.

<comment><USER15> This project has been going for over 10 years now.

<comment><USER16> Did COSMOS initially not use Mono? I seem to remember a toy OS kernel named either Cosmo or COSMOS on OSdever that was written in x86 ASM and C and had a shell, multitasking, paging memory manager, and a loader with RING0 and RING3 processes. This would have been ~2005-2006 ish. Was this it?

<comment><USER17> I've been watching Cosmos development since that time period and I think this is the same one you are thinking of. I swear ten years ago the TODO list was the same for this project.

<comment><USER16> I am amazed they stuck with it for so long then and how far it came along. I used them as a reference for my own homebrew x86 kernel back in the day.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


'The Laughing Man' – Siegfried Müller, ex-Wehrmacht NATO operative (1966) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NB9gyyVrbxk <comment><USER2> Congo crisis context: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24250512](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24250512)

<comment><USER2> Any idea what the cut at minute 39 may have contained?

<comment><AUTHOR> No idea. But of course while one can never be too paranoid when speculating about such things, the reality of what's already known about what the Western powers did in the Congo seems hard to exceed in a way that would demand censorship.</comment></comment></comment>