Ask HN: The project you're working on already exists. What to do? - <AUTHOR>

This just happened to me.<p>I know I could design a better site, but that doesn't change the fact that the fundamental idea and features are still the same. I don't want the other site's owner to feel like I'm copying his site. Has this ever happend to anyone? Should I just scrap my project or go with it? I'm also looking to avoid legal problems. <comment><USER2> I would say: come up with a better idea. I know it's in vogue to claim that "ideas are worthless' and "it's already been done before", but quite honestly, I think that's crap.

Personally (me, one individual) have 4-5+ solid "ideas" with significant market research behind them. None of them have competitors, whatsoever, and all of them solve huge problems in the marketplace. The only thing holding me back is a lack of technical skill, which I am solving by learning how to program.

So, that being said, I would think a little harder. Rome wasn't built in a day, and an original idea isn't likely to come in a weekend.

<comment><AUTHOR> The thing is that I was actually in the same position as you. I've been keeping a list of ideas (most crap, but some good ones IMO) for the past 5+ years. The only thing holding me back was technical skill as well. Now I finally have the skill to build it. I've been thinking about this site for at least three years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think I remember reading something where PG addressed this issue. To paraphrase, you don't know if both you and your competitor are aiming for the same goal. Even though your products might look similar and provide similar technology, yours might be better for a certain vertical that isn't being addressed. Having similar or even the same idea isn't bad, just make sure to stay focused on what you're really trying to achieve.

Hell, there's a reason they haven't cornered the market.

</comment><comment><USER4> We're actually about to launch (probably this weekend or next) a service that already exists. We just don't think our service has been done very well yet, so we're not that worried. We just decided that we won't over build it at first. We're launching something that solves the big problem and we'll see what the users want. Don't worry too much. Worse case, you have to make another startup. And that's just fun!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks and good luck with your launch!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Its actually a good thing you have found another site.

It validates your idea and gives you a focal point to differentiate yourself.

How can you be different? what can I do better?

how can I do a more customer centric solution?

how can I market better?

make yourself "not" the other site - how?

</comment><comment><USER6> This kind of thing happens a lot more than you think. Unless the existing site has a patent thicket, my advice is go for it.

If this is a project that you care about, and one at which you can do a better job, then don't let anything hold you back. What would our world be like without competition?

</comment><comment><USER7> _Has this ever happend to anyone?_

It happens to most people. Very few ideas are unique. In fact most aren't.

 _I'm also looking to avoid legal problems._

Is your product/service classed as competition or do they provide a product/service that's copyrighted?

<comment><AUTHOR> My project is just a fun website and is kind of like DearBlankPleaseBlank, FMYLife, and TextsFromLastNight.

It would be like me creating a website called ScrewMyLife and finding out that FMYLife already exists. The only difference is that FMYLife is wildly popular and all clones automatically fail. My competitor has probably received a couple hundred thousand visits (the content is very viral), but not enough that a well designed website could easily crush it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It happens all the time. Actually you should be worried if it doesn't exist (it may mean there's no market for it - however another website doesn't imply that there's a market, but it's a clue). Also, you will know what to copy and what to do better!

<comment><AUTHOR> It's funny you say that. I made a website last summer targeted to freshmen entering college. There was absolutely no market, so it did really well and got 150,000 visits in one summer. I got an offer to buy the site (for a couple thousand) and said no. The guy ended up creating his own site and out did mine in every way. That's partly why I decided to work on a new project mid-way through the summer.

<comment><USER8> yes, it can also happen you discover a new market. In that case, great :-) However, I think many developers make a mistake of doing something that has absolutely no market...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It happens all the time. What I've learned from past is if your idea is unique then it is likely that there is no market for it. Idea doesn't have to be unique, there can be two players in the market, it's execution that matters.

<comment><AUTHOR> What if the features are the almost the same but the design/experience is vastly superior?

Imagine that FMYLife was created two years ago but never really went anywhere because it was poorly marketed and just looked like crap. You KNOW there's huge potential and it would do much better with an improved design/experience. That's sort of where I'm at right now. The problem is that the only new feature I can think of is to use Facebook connect to grab a user's like and suggest personalized content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It is very rare these days that you'll come up with an idea that hasn't been done.

What's important is that you do it better than anyone else - so take a look at how they're doing it and figure out how you can do it better.

</comment><comment><USER11> Ever been to a food court? They all essentially sell food and more or less all of them make a success of it. You need to get to the core of the idea and breed a USP around it.

</comment><comment><USER12> Burger King was started even though there was already McDonald's...think of it as a validation of your idea and find a way to make yours better

</comment><comment><USER13> A few weeks ago, someone on here wrote that if you are pursuing a business with no competition, you are either a genius or a fool.

</comment><comment><USER14> Redefine the idea and be more innovative than your competitor. Your new project will be much better.

</comment><comment><USER6> Underdo your competition.

</comment><comment><USER15> 'Has this ever happened to anyone?'

Yes. When we started our company, the space was already fairly crowded. We worked to do it better than they were.

Also, if you ever intend to grow, you will have to get over your fear of legal problems. Retain an attorney and run critical plans by him/her.</comment>


Why does sound technology seems to be lagging behind? (3d, physics, etc) - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN!
I've a long time passion with binaural audio (spatial sound, aka, the real 3d), and took the initiative to tap this unexplored potential to start creating a game that is all about sound, no visuals.
The more I research the more I get to realize that recreating realistic sound environments in computers is really lagging behind, compared to, for example the realistic physics we have in today's games, photorealistic renders and 3d scenes etc.
Sound is lightyears away! Why is nobody puting effort into it? Is it more challenging than 3d or physics? In fact, sound IS physics, so it would make sense to have the whole package together.
Why is the "sound industry" not pushing this further? thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> I don't want to use this for self-promotion, so I'm posting a link here in the comment, for those who want to know more about my experiments with spatial sound: [http://bitoutsidethebox.com/shabda/](http://bitoutsidethebox.com/shabda/) (its very very pre-pre-alpha, but playable in all 3 OSes)

</comment><comment><USER2> The tech side seems mostly solved as of the late 90s/early 00s--look at A3D, EAX, etc.

The production side is tricky and expensive, though, and can be hard for indie teams to get right unless they've got a _lot_ of experience.

What makes you ask this question?

<comment><AUTHOR> well, I'm making something with binaural audio, and I keep wondering why is this not used more frequentely in games, for example. Heck, even mainstream stuff like Unity3D doesn't support spatial sounds. There's a huge untapped potential in this technology, the realism of sound should be the same as the realism we have in graphics and physics.

Sound IS physics. All the 3 should be developed in order to bring more realism to computer experiences. I see lots of new stuff coming out in everything, except sound.

<comment><USER2> How do you differentiate between binaural and spatial and 3D? I'm pretty sure this has been around for a while, though perhaps by another name.

<comment><AUTHOR> binaural and spatial is the same, 3d is quite different and really nothing compared to real spatial sound. check the link I left in my other comment, I explain the differences there. but wikipedia will probably do a good job too.

after you understand that, you'll see why i'm asking the question, sound tech is really behind</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hire.Bid - <AUTHOR> https://hire.bid

<comment><USER2> I can't remember seeing "Patent Pending" proudly displayed on a marketplace startup's site. What's the patent for?

</comment><comment><USER3> It's too easy to hit the sign in button, without knowing it's limited to DC, the first mention of which is below the fold.

<comment><AUTHOR> We've changed it to now open it up to all high-end U.S. professionals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If any professional can sign up, how do clients feel confident that the professionals listed on the site are indeed the best?

<comment><AUTHOR> Pricing and past ratings (including our unique hourly value ratings). Professionals can start off offering their time blocks for lower prices (or tell people familiar with your work of your available time blocks) but as they get known they should have greater pricing power.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's limited to U.S. initially. The DC market is where we are based and initially focused but works for all U.S. professionals.

</comment><comment><USER5> That second sentence (initially targeting...) is quite a sentence. Maybe consider breaking that up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! We changed it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> LinkedIn login? I'm sure that'll guarantee you really get the best professionals, because they totally network on LinkedIn...</comment>


Youtubify, a Spotify clone with YouTube as back end - <AUTHOR> http://youtubify.vebto.com/ <comment><USER2> Either YouTube shuts off API access or they get hit with a lawsuit. Nonetheless, this is a very cool idea and excellent execution!

</comment><comment><USER3> Would love to see this as an official part of YouTube! YouTube has large amounts of music that is hard to find anywhere else online (vinyl only, etc). For listening I usually make playlists on YouTube, but this is incredibly clunky.

<comment><USER2> I thought YouTube Red 'solved' this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> YouTube's rules have something against not displaying the video.

This will need to be updated to display the video to stay up.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think this is interesting from a legal perspective, and quite impressive.

</comment><comment><USER5> The site completely breaks the back button</comment>


Scribd for Electronics Schematics - <AUTHOR> http://www.circuitbee.com/

<comment><USER2> I'm glad someone put this up here, after the press we've had the last couple of days I think I need advice from all you guys on how to manage this.

Since Make posted about it on Saturday we've had over 45k unique views, and over a thousand people have signed up. I'm the only developer on this and am struggling to keep up with everything that's going on. In a few days when all the noise dies down I'm going to have to do a post-mortem, and I think then I'll really be looking for advise from people here on how to proceed on such a large project alone without funding.

@eugenejen - I'd love to do circuit simulation with it, but that is all a bit beyond me mathematically though I'm sure there are good resources out there to work from. We're definitely aiming to do meta tags, and hopefully since we parse the schematics into XML documents we can search within schematics as well for components.

<comment><USER3> Hi, thanks for your comment.

To be able to simulate circuits, I guess we need to add those Verilog/VHDL descriptions for digital circuits and I guess to implement that feature alone is a very overwhelming task.

I think implementing a tagging system is a very good start. And probably build a community of users that can give feedback on circuits will be very cool features for users.

I am glad to see you guys working on this. Wish you guys the best.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is cool. I put a similar idea into my idea book for a while after I found current electronic circuits sites still work like 10 years ago. I like the idea to use HTML 5 Canvas to render schematics.

I guess other cool features in the long run can be 1\. Integrate simulators so circuits can be tested. 2\. Meta tags for search circuits based on purposes, types, components.</comment>


The Post-Mac Interface - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@twomonthsoff/the-post-mac-interface-1031b94df77b <comment><USER2> "Most of us don't even need all the computing power in our pocket. We've gotten to a place of sufficiency, when just about any computer or smartphone is good enough for what we want them to do."

This is a fairly timeless sentiment. Even more ubiquitous is looking back and laughing at just how primitive formerly-sufficient technology was. You'd think we'd know by now to just not have this thought anymore!

<comment><USER3> My laptop has a 2.7GHz possessor. When I need to conserve power, I lock in down to 0.8GHz, sometimes I forget to unlock it. Most of the time I don't even notice the difference.

Maybe, at some point, we will come up with a use-case that needs more compute that what we currently have, but for most people's current usecase, compute is not the limiting factor.

<comment><USER4> Don't mean to derail the conversation, but, -wha?!?!? That's amazing, I had no idea you could do that. How do you do that?

<comment><USER5> on OSX: [http://superuser.com/questions/8381/can-i-reduce-the-cpu- spe...](http://superuser.com/questions/8381/can-i-reduce-the-cpu-speed-of-my- macbook-when-on-battery)

on Windows: [http://superuser.com/questions/565347/how-does-windows- limit...](http://superuser.com/questions/565347/how-does-windows-limit-the- cpu-power-options-battery-saving)

On Linux: [https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CPU_frequency_scaling](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CPU_frequency_scaling)

You can also play with the BIOS, according to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underclocking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underclocking)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "I use Siri all the time to set up reminders, but not much else."

Siri, Google Now, or Cortana are on the verge of becoming something quite useful. Hopefully, all three. Voice as a user interface is perfect for many tasks:

I use Siri all the time with Apple Music: [https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2015/07/31/apple-musics- killer-...](https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2015/07/31/apple-musics-killer- feature/)

Someday soon, we'll even use voice recognition to help write code:

[https://www.extrahop.com/blog/2014/programming-by-voice- stay...](https://www.extrahop.com/blog/2014/programming-by-voice-staying- productive-without-harming-yourself/)

[http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/using_voice_to_code.html](http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/using_voice_to_code.html)

<comment><USER7> I can see it now, an open plan office, 100 developers with noise cancelling headphones on, yelling at their computers because they can't tell how loud they are.

<comment><USER6> In the movie Her, there were several office scenes and a subway? scene with Joaquin Phoenix talking in a low voice to his computer. You probably need a directional noise canceling microphone, but not headphones. In the last link that I gave, there is a recommended microphone that Tavis Rudd uses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >"Think of how often you Undo every day. Undo makes lots of apps safe for exploration and regular use."

In 2015, when I see and use software that doesn't subtly prompt the user to undo actions for a short period of time after an interaction I just shake my head.

It's such an easy way to reduce customer service complaints it's ridiculous. Empirically, with the companies I have consulted, 'ridiculous' often means 20-40% instant reduction of complaints.

<comment><USER9> The Unix shell, one of the most successful user interfaces ever developed, doesn't support undo nor does it need to. It's successful because it doesn't presume to know better than the user.

<comment><USER10> > The Unix shell doesn't support undo

Oh but i would like it _so_ much if it did. There would be no need for --dry- run options on commands, and it would be much easier to test command-line software and do exploratory learning.

I think it would be a great usability improvement. Even if it were "only" on a file-system change level. And even if weren't always enabled, like, maybe make it so you have to first "begin" a file-system transaction to be able to roll it back if you don't like the changes you did. Imagine something like:

      $ begin-tx
      tx$ ./some-script-i-am-not-sure-works-properly
      tx$ # Check if everything looks good.
      tx$ # In case everything went good:
      tx$ Ctrl+D # ...or "commit" to end the transaction.
      tx$ # Or, in case i see something went wrong:
      tx$ Ctrl+X # ...or "abort" to roll back the changes.
      $

(Disclaimer: maybe something like this already exists, is widely supported, and i've just been doing it wrong the whole time.)

Strangely, the only command-line software where i feel i can do exploratory learning, instead of always having to resort to the man pages, is git. With git, even if i'm making the most destructive history rewriting with `git filter-branch`, i know that if i screw up i can always run `git reflog` and checkout some ref that i know was OK.

<comment><USER3> You would need to implement this at the file-system level. You should be able to do this easily with any file-system that supports snapshotting, such as btrfs.

<comment><USER11> I don't think it's that easy and I do think the parent has a point. I mean, while you're busy writing a perl one-liner to munge on your file, ten daemons are writing to their log files, all on the same file system. You want to roll back the effects of your script doing an accidental rm ~/*, but not what's in the logs. Probably a better idea is to strace the shell's children and record changes, then apply or forget them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My iPad has been sidelining my MBP for some time. Installing the public beta of iOS9 - which includes cmnd. + tab switching between apps - accelerated that trend. And increasingly, I'm using Siri / voice input for more and more stuff. Now my biggest frustration is that my physical keyboard doesn't include a mic. button like the iPad's onscreen keyboard.

If anyone from Apple is reading this, not that you've got two empty spots on either side of the up arrow. The other one would be fine for emoji ;-)

<comment><USER13> Apple's latest design removed those empty spots.[1] But don't despair, you can already get a lot of what you want without dedicated buttons.

To open an emoji menu in OS X (10.10 or later IIRC), just focus on a text input and hit ^ + ⌘ + spacebar. You can also search for other unicode characters. "⌘" is a little tricky to find, since it's named "place of interest marker" or something like that.

OS X doesn't yet have Siri, but it does have Dictation. I assume that when Siri replaces Dictation, the typical keyboard shortcuts for toggling it will stay the same: double-tapping fn or ⌘.

1\. [http://geoff.greer.fm/photos/pics/IMG_1269.JPG](http://geoff.greer.fm/photos/pics/IMG_1269.JPG)

<comment><USER14> I see now why my mac-using friends love vim keybinds: those arrows look like a nightmare to use. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I like that superposition of "Anti-mac's" Reality vs "Mac's" Metaphore. Dudes, even us, mere mortals only interact with "Reality" with interfaces through convenient metaphors delivered with imperfect senses to adaptive neural networks of the "mind". How can "Anti-mac" interface with Reality is beyond my understanding, some enlightenment would be much appreciated.

</comment><comment><USER16> I am starting to see a trend of GUI being structure-less / hierarchy-less. A prime example is amazon's Music App for windows. It moves from screen to screen with no apparent logic, with some screens (like the download manager tab) appearing sometimes but with no obvious way to get back to it if we hide it. Same thing for the itunes app which doesn't show on a screen how we got to it. Both seem to be inspired from the web, except that the web pretty much always has a menu at the top which gives a good idea of where we are.

The Windows 10 UI also seems to follow this logic and seems to have ditched the idea to show any apparent hierarchy in the sub menus of the control panels. Particularly in full screen mode.

I can't tell if it is because I am used to deal with GUIs that have a clear hierarchy that this design upsets me, or if it is simply because it is badly designed. I guess the acid test is whether a kid can find his way comfortably.

</comment><comment><USER17> What's the difference between an app and a program? Author talks about older programs and newer apps; syntactically it would seem to me that any program would have several 'applications.' But that doesn't seem to be how the word is used since everything wants to be an app today.

<comment><USER18> I think app is just a trendy word for application (or computer program) possibly with the implication that it has a user interface.

So application are old apps and apps are new applications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > I own my iTunes library, don't need a membership card, and I don't exactly > "borrow" items from it.

Depends on how many songs have DRM on them I guess. It's certainly not true for iTunes shows and movies

</comment><comment><USER20> > You do less pointing-and-clicking; instead you tell the computer what you > want.

Sign me up, can't stand all the pointing-and-clicking.

<comment><USER21> It's called a terminal. hehe.

<comment><USER22> We need a formal language that is a little more amenable than what we need to put in the terminal. But dictating to a comfortable hearing terminal would be great!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How would you work offline on a bus ( or plane, or train )? - <AUTHOR> Currently i spend 1.5 hours ( but, it could go up to 6 hours if it rains hard enough ) commuting to work, and another 1.5 back to home. I take my old dell notebook and my headphones with me, and during this time i am basically offline ( sometimes a bit of 3g or gprs connectivity is available, but not reliably ) and keep data sync'ed over rsync and ssh to my VPS when i am at the office or at home.
I use the (linux) notebook for programming on my side projects while on the road, so, all documentation needed must be available locally on my SSD. I would like to ask how would <i>you</i> do it ?
Which tools would you choose ? How would you set them up ?...
Any suggestions to ease my life ( other than "change to a job closer to home" ) and make this commuting a more productive time ? <comment><USER2> If you want to educate yourself more, you could register for some courses on edX.org or coursera.org. Both sites offer downloading of lectures and course materials. I did that for awhile until I got a more reliable 3g connection. I love my train commute and strive to make it at least 30% productive, the other 70% is watching Netflix, other just general web surfing, sometimes it approaches 50%. Either way I enjoy the time to explore new content, whether it be educational or pure entertainment.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't have a regular commute, but I usually work offline when travelling.

First, some non-programming things:

* Answer emails with an offline email client (e.g. GMail Offline, Thunderbird).

* Download things to read. Consider an RSS reader, Pocket, or just saving PDFs and eBooks. For times when I'm stuck on a project or don't feel like squishing myself into an awkward position to use my laptop I'll pull out my Kindle ($20 from a flea market) which has a bunch of public-domain books from Project Gutenberg, and papers that looked interesting to read. The YouTube app allows you to download videos to watch offline, too. (This may only apply if you have a YouTube Red subscription.)

* Take up knitting, or darn your socks.

Now the programming-related stuff. Working offline is very different than working with an Internet connection; not only do you have to have your documentation locally but also you have to figure out any problems without the help of StackOverflow. This generally results in less productivity, but a deeper understanding of the software you're using.

* Use [https://devdocs.io](https://devdocs.io) to keep an up-to-date offline version of any software you use. Also install the -doc packages (or your distro's equivalent) for any software you have.

* Find out how any package managers you use (e.g. apt, npm, pip, docker) cache packages. If you have even the remotest suspicion that you may want to use a package, put it in the cache when you're near an internet connection so you can install it later.

* Use git. For your own projects, you can commit offline and push to the server when you have a chance; for other programs/libraries having a copy of the source code is helpful when you're trying to track down why something isn't working and you can't just Google it.

* Whenever possible, set up a local copy of whatever you're deploying and make it as easy as possible to sync your local copy to the live version. If you're using Docker this is your Dockerfile; for servers I will keep a dev instance as a local VM managed by Vagrant, with the config stored as an Ansible playbook. This way I can get the Ansible playbook to do what I want in the VM and then deploy it to the live server later.

* This way of working will influence the software you write. If you're building a company you're likely to wind up using fewer cloud-based systems and more self-hosted (or at least self-hostable) ones, since you can test against a self-hosted service if you have a local instance. (Example: for error reporting, use Sentry rather than Airbrake or Rollbar. Even if you use the Sentry.io SaaS in production, you can set up a Sentry docker container for testing locally.) Even if you do have a dependency on an external service, you will have some sort of OFFLINE flag that disables that feature or turns off cache refreshing.

<comment><AUTHOR> wow, thanks for such detailed response, and the withdrawal of stackOverflow is really my main distress.

devdocs.io offline was a nice surprise, specially since it has a kotlin chapter, and i am playing with it currently. :)</comment></comment>


"Poor Man's Patent" or Minimum needed to apply for a U.S. Patent? - <AUTHOR>

My friend has a good idea for a hardware thingy.
An example, not his real idea, is below:
"A device that hooks onto a ladder so you can add a second ladder easily and safely."
I told him he should make it and then apply for a patent and he said he already emailed himself the idea which he calls 'the Poor Man's Patent' and that he is covered. I told him that as far as I know it doesn't count. He has no drawings or diagrams or even a journal showing any work on it. He said that he believes that the idea itself is patentable and his email covers that. I said it is not and it is the finished fully described and replicable device that is patentable -- that ideas themselves aren't patentable. I then told him that since I made no verbal contract to not pursue his idea and that since I did not sign a NDA that in a few months if I applied for a patent and I have the schematics and diagrams and my notebooks showing all the things I tried and what worked and didn't then he'd be out of luck.
That it isn't the idea:
"A device to make time travel possible"
that gets a patent but an actual, working device:
"A device to make time travel possible" Along with the schematics to make the device and such.
Which one of us is right? <comment><USER2> Your friend is describing "poor man's copyright" or an "inventor's notebook," except done incorrectly.

First, "poor man's copyright" is the wrongly-held belief that you can mail yourself something, and the official postal service postmark will be proof enough that you wrote it when you said you did. This is not true, and will not hold up in a court of law. A much more easily forgeable email would hold up even less than not-at-all.

Second, a patent, by definition, is a set of protections conferred _in exchange for public disclosure._ An actual patent requires enough detail that someone with a general understanding of whatever domain the patent is under could build your device, replicate your process, etc.

In fact, publicly publishing not only the idea, but also the implementation, is the only defense against someone else filing a patent for it, as that establishes prior art. For paper publication, that means notarized copies of your "inventor's notebook:" <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventor%27s_notebook>

You can also file for a patent and then abandon your application.

Online publication is dicier unless you can get external proof that your publication dates are what you said they were (archive.org records, perhaps? other blogs citing you?).

Because the US is the only(?) "first to invent" country (everyone else is first-to-file), you can more easily contest a patent by demonstrating that you were actively reducing it to practice (that replicable amount of detail again) before the filer was. Otherwise, you'd have to demonstrate that it was unpatentable instead: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_to_file_and_first_to_inve...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_to_file_and_first_to_invent)</comment>


Finding jobs with startups - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> A hacker friend asked me a while ago how to find a job with a startup, and it bothers me that I've never been able to give him a satisfactory answer. I wanted to respond "through friends" but that's not very helpful to someone who isn't as well-connected, which he isn't because he made the mistake of taking a mind-numbing job when he left college and losing touch with his classmates.

Startups don't often hire recruiters, and most of the "startup" job ads on the internet job boards seem to be either a) established companies claiming to be startups in order to sound trendy, or b) Ponzi schemes. So what's left?

<comment><USER2> Many VCs actually post their portfolio's job openings on their website:

\- Sequoia: <http://www.hireloop.com/sequoia%2Denterprise/careers/portfolio_careers_home.asp?fnc=comp>

\- Kleiner Perkins: <http://www.hireloop.com/kpcb/careers/portfolio_careers_home.asp>

\- First Round: <http://www.firstround.com/openings.html>

You might want to try to find a list of reputable VCs and google their websites for any job portfolios.

<comment><USER2> Also, I was able to find my job this summer by just checking out the websites of startups I'd want to work for. The first thing most startups do when trying to hire is post job descriptions on their site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> A whole lot of startups post on Craigslist. Searching for "startup", "funded", etc works pretty well. Quite a few totally legit early-stage startups post there.

[http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sof?query=startup&format;=rss](http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sof?query=startup&format=rss)

<comment><USER4> One post I read, and I'm sure there are others like it, are from people with some great idea (secret, of course) and they need someone to actually _do_ it.

Those crack me up -- what are they even bringing to the table? "You do all the work, and we'll give you a small percentage."

<comment><USER5> There is more to a startup than just code. For example, from the sounds of it the producer currently seems to be the person with the highest workload at justin.tv (except for Justin, who is working 24/7).

<comment><USER4> Of course, but what do you want to bet most people with a "great idea" have anything more to offer than that?

Before Justin.tv launched, I imagine there was a lot of coding/testing involved. Most start-ups don't need a TV producer even _after_ they have a product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Would most founders be interested in finding programmers through the traditional job posting/resume/interview process? I'm thinking that to get a crack at working with really excellent programmers and founders, you probably need to be connected through a network and known a bit by reputation. No, you don't have to be famous, just respected and known by a group of good peers.

I take a particular interst in this question because I'm working on a project (that doesn't deserve to be called a startup, but maybe it could be), and I need someone with kick-ass UI design and graphics skills (I wrote the backend myself, but it looks lame). I'll go through my blurred social/professional networks to see who would be into it.

Then again, I'm just looking for someone I already know and like who would dig the project and maybe want to make something of it. An actual job job, the kind that pays money, can probably afford to be more formal about this sort of thing. But would you want to be? Seems safer to go through those blurry networks at an early stage, where one bad programmer can drag everything down. and one good one can rev it up fast.

</comment><comment><USER7> Are you sure you want to work for a startup? In my experience, working at a startup is good for one thing: learning how to manage a bunch of random stuff all happening at the same time.

You don't get paid as well as if you just worked at google or yahoo, and as an employee, your stake is usually something like .25-.75% of the company, which means if the place gets bought for 100M, you'll make out with about $120K extra, 4 years down the road.

$120K isn't anything to scoff at, but keep in mind that startups pay a lower salary, and if you scored a job at yahoo for $90K instead of $60K at the startup, after 4 years you'd have the same amount of money.

Now, if you can swing a deal where you get 10% of the company, I'd go for it. But with a percentage like that, you're gonna be employee 3, co-founding, not just "have a job at a startup."

</comment><comment><USER8> For me, it's been a combination of craigslist and the network of people that I have worked with in the past.

Having worked for 9 companies in the last 10 years, I've found that it's more about who you know than what you know.

And if you are well connected in the internet industry AND talented, startups will find you.

Also, get your resume on the web and let the search engines index it. You'd be surprised at how many random searches will lead people to it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Just found this article from the dotcom boom area by chance: <http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/05/02/sacrifice/index2.html> \- is it still like that to work for a startup?

</comment><comment><USER9> I recently discovered a site, <http://buildv1.com> that was built for hooking up startups with startuppers. I actually found someone from this site that worked with us for a little while.

</comment><comment><USER10> Idea: Start a website that connect/matches founders!

<comment><USER11> Hey, that's my idea! I'm going to make a mint!

Step 1: get lots of people jobs

Step 2: ...

Step 3: Profit!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> there are a fair number of postings from multiple sites specifically about startups here -

<http://www.gobignetwork.com/startup-company-job/></comment>


A throw-away project that became useful: minimalist node.js framework - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gliese1337/e.js

<comment><AUTHOR> About a month ago, I decided I should finally familiarize myself with node.js, so I went ahead and wrote a slightly-more-than-basic web server. A month later, it turned out that my throw-away learning code was incredibly useful for saving oodles of time prototyping at work. So, I resurrected it and decided to start cleaning it up and adding features as I find them useful. There's not much done yet, but hopefully somebody else finds it useful, too.</comment>


iOS App Maker on the iPhone - <AUTHOR> https://testflight.apple.com/join/zElad2Q2 <comment><USER2> Could you provide a little information about this app?

<comment><AUTHOR> The Testflight link is to a prototype I built last December. It uses a general solution to Apple's new SwiftUI to allow the user to build their own SwiftUI views, test them instantly without compiling, and export them to Swift code. Anything you build from the editor can be used in a real iOS project.

This prototype's main feature is that it uses real iOS Swift code as the "source of truth" for the editor. The current prototype linked mainly demonstrates a proof of concept that it is possible to dynamically generate any SwiftUI view at runtime and run it in a UIWindow. Eventually this will be integrated as part of a real iOS project's build system to automate a lot of the development process.

I also have a second project that is more improved and completes more of my vision. I'm slowly copying files over to the current Testflight prototype linked. The new one allows you to include @State vars and pass parameters to views.

I want to eventually have the app sync with a real GitHub project of an iOS app and be able to embed the editor into your build system so that you could have custom components in the editor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This seems quite useful. Thank-you.</comment>


Glut of Capital and Labor Challenge Policy Makers - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/global-glut-challenges-policy-makers-1429867807?mod=trending_now_3

<comment><USER2> Warning: It's a paywall.</comment>


Google Confirms Cops Can Wiretap Your Hangouts - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/google-confirms-cops-can-wiretap-your-hangouts <comment><USER2> This is why, if you want video conferencing or VoIP, you can't trust the encryption unless you are dead certain that it is end-to-end, and you have control over the implementation of the crypto at both ends.

Lots of people regard Skype as secure because its connections are encrypted - but Skype is in the middle.</comment>


Male, female or custom? Facebook adds options for users to self-identify - <AUTHOR> http://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2014/02/13/apnewsbreak-new-gender-options-for-facebook-users <comment><USER2> Sweet. Like they say in the article, this won't matter for a lot of people, but for those who use it, it matters a great deal.

I have one friend who changed gender and it really opened my eyes to how poorly a societally mandated absolute gender binary serves some people. And the extent to which that gender binary is actively enforced by society. I just never noticed before, because I fit reasonably well into one of the available boxes.

<comment><USER3> Most people never really notice how much of life in designed for the people in the meaty part of the bell curve unless they are or are close to an outlier. It can range from something like the inability to distinguish certain colors, being exceptionally tall, not having a binary gender identity, or those people who implanted electromagnetic sensors into their body to sense electric fields. But having at least one outlier trait that makes you not _normal_ can give you a new appreciation for all the challenges that people run into on a daily basis for just being a little different. We as developers have an obligation to think about these things. And if the opportunity presents itself to remove one challenge by turning a select input into a text input (or a binary radio button to a select), we have an responsibility to do it.

<comment><USER2> Yes, definitely.

I never thought I'd be grateful for being a fat, nerdy, awkward kid. It sure sucked a lot of the time then. But now those experiences really help me appreciate why it's important to try to be especially respectful toward people who are different not just in my specific ways, but in their own fashion. They are already getting enough crap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > "It's impossible to deny the biological reality that humanity is divided > into two halves - male and female"

Actually, it's pretty easy. Even on a biological/genetic level, the lines can get rather blurry.

There are people with male genitalia who have two X chromosomes, people with female genitalia who have a Y chromosome, and a bunch of other variations[0][1][2][3].

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

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

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

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

( _EDIT_ : added citations, which scott_karana linked to in another comment thread)

<comment><USER5> It's quite accurate as an approximation though, is it not? Genetic abnormalities are just that, abnormalities.

I fully support equality, but... if I said _" Humans have five fingers on each hand"_, would you disagree and declare _" clearly humans have no defined number of fingers on each hand, as every now and again a human is born with four or six fingers on a hand"_? I don't personally care how many fingers you have, but it seems pretty clear to me that is a biological accident, and does not refute the notion that _" Humans have five fingers"_.

<comment><USER2> All of what we are is biological accident.

Your notions about what makes for a human is something that lives in your head. Which is fine; the world is a complicated place, and we can't represent it in 3 pounds of meat without simplifying.

But the mistake many people make with gender (and a lot of other things) is to try to reverse the flow, demanding that the world correspond to the mental model.

As a non-gender example, I have friends who are ethnically complicated. Sometimes people will just ask them, "What _are_ you?" Even strangers on the street. By which they mean, "I am uncomfortable because you don't conform to my notions of race. Please put yourself in one of my boxes." Those people always look like assholes.

When I arrived in San Francisco 15 years ago, I used to worry about what gender people were. I was uncomfortable that they didn't fit in the categories I had inherited. Was that person "really" a woman? Eventually I learned that gender was much more complicated than I expected.

But I _also_ learned that other people don't have an obligation to fit neatly into my prejudices. Now my take is practical: unless I'm intending to have sex with somebody, what they have in their pants is none of my business. English, alas, makes ignoring gender entirely impossible. So sometimes I am forced to ask, "Hey, what pronoun would you like me to use for you?"

<comment><USER5> _By which they mean, "I am uncomfortable because you don't conform to my notions of race. Please put yourself in one of my boxes."_

You seem to be assuming.

At least when I ask what background someone is, it's usually either:

\- bewilderment. I'm mildly interested in the differences in morphology between ethnicity, so I get very curious when someone's ethnicity is completely ambiguous. I also get excited when I can successfully identify the ethnic background of people with a mixed background, which of course requires asking. _" Your cheekbones look Native American; your nose & eyes look Swiss...?"_

\- an attempt to quickly sketch out an early mental model of that person, to understand them better. Does every asian kid have super-strict parents? Of course not! But it is a common theme, so it gets tacked on to the early mental model: "May have had strict parents?".

<comment><USER2> I'm assuming for a given individual, but I'm confident in the aggregate based on other data.

Yes, some people are legitimately curious about the great tapestry of ethnic diversity. (I'm one of them.) I think there are reasonable, polite ways to handle that. Walking up to strangers and demanding that they say what they "are" is not one of them.

But note that in both of your forks, you're trying to place somebody in a box in your head. In the first, bewilderment, you are uncomfortable because somebody fails to conform to your existing boxes. You may have a much more interesting and nuanced set of boxes than the average person. You may be much more polite than the boneheads I'm describing. You also surely understand that those boxes are a pretty artificial construct, and that it's not the job of people on the street to help you improve your set of boxes. But if you think about what goes on for people for whom none of those is true, I think you'll find it pretty easy to imagine their side of an encounter like this.

<comment><USER6> Watch out, here comes one of those ever-so-frightening generalizations...

Humans are a learning species. Everything we observe is converted by our brains into data to be filed somewhere, even if it's only temporary storage because we consider it unimportant. This attribute is nearly fundamental to sentience. Let's not get offended when someone wants to learn more about the people around them, and what makes them themselves. This, of course, doesn't justify walking up to someone on the street and invading their personal space and time, but it does mean your vendetta against mental organization and near- automatic pattern matching is misguided.

Quick, tell me about people who can't recall much information at all! No, wait, tell me about people who are vegetative or catatonic and therefore unable to process the events occurring around them and convert them into data! Tell me about people who have a failed mental organizational process! This, naturally, would invalidate all of my claims and finally prove me a bigot.

<comment><USER2> I am all for learning. But you don't get to decide what other people are going to get offended about.

People in minority groups are understandably sometimes sensitive about people in dominant majorities acting like the minorities are obliged to educate them.

I don't have any particular vendetta against pattern-matching. Being made out of meat, I do it myself. But if it isn't done with respect and politeness, it is at best negligent and at worst arrogant and self-centered. And I definitely have a problem with those behaviors, especially directed at people who already have a hard row to hoe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Those petitioning for the change insist that there are an infinite number of > genders, but just saying it doesn't make it so.

Funny that HE says that, since disregarding your moral stand point on a non cisgender person, the reality, observational and scientific, is that sex is much more complicated than male and female. What we do with that may be up for discussion, but I find ironic how he's trying to deny this reality, basically, by just saying so.

<comment><USER8> Maybe _gender_ is more complicated, but sex?

<comment><USER9> Sex can be complicated too. Look up XXY, XYY, and the SRY protein.

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

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

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

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

<comment><USER10> Does any of those mutations produce fertile individuals, with both reproductive organs fully functional though? I don't know enough to answer, but I believe that's what the parent is asking.

<comment><USER11> So people who are infertile don't count? I don't understand your point.

<comment><USER10> What I'm saying is, from a _biological_ perspective, isn't sex determined by the gametes (which as far as I known, are two), regardless of vestigial organs, number of chromosomes, etc.? I think that's what caused the confusion on the parent about existing more than one _sex_ (reproductive role); of course, by that measure, infertility is undetermined as it plays no role in reproduction.

<comment><USER5> Totally agree with you. At least in humans, there are two _very clearly defined_ reproductive roles. Test tubes and surgical procedures can interfere a bit, but you can't be "mostly" a gamete donor or "only somewhat" of a gamete receptor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Unexpected but long overdue. It's a feature which means a lot to those that want it and has zero effect on those who don't. Glad to see the change.

<comment><USER13> This change does not affect me, but I don't want to be pressured into referring to a male as female if he really is a male. Part of the transgender agenda is forcing others to accept such "gender identities". I don't want to endorse other people's illusions.

<comment><USER2> So it's ok if we burst your bubble about some of your illusions? E.g., that you understand what you're talking about? Or that you are the one person granted divine right to determine who is "really" a male?

Your personal relationship to gender is very simple. Yay, good for you. But there are people whose relationships are more complex. I promise that they have thought about gender 100x more than you have, and it is you that have the illusions here.

How do I know? Well, I started out with those same illusions and then actually talked to people who changed gender or who just don't fit well in a gender- binary framework. I learned a lot. If you're willing to set aside your arrogance on this, you could do the same.

<comment><USER14> The user you're referring to made no mention of gender.

<comment><USER2> Except, of course, when he talked about gender identity, the transgender "agenda", how he refers to the gender of other people, and his construction of what somebody "really" is.

<comment><USER14> He doesn't refer to gender, he refers to sex. Please educate yourself on the difference between the two.

<comment><USER2> Thanks, I'm already familiar. (I'm not clear that you are, though, so unless you start being more explicit about your point, I'm done after this.) When he talks about how he refers to people, then we're already in the land of gender. Biological sex is something he can't directly perceive. He is basically saying that he wants to act as if gender is always exactly equivalent to biological sex. His post is basically arguing for a simplistic and essentialist notion of gender. Thus his opposition to the transgender "agenda".

<comment><USER14> This user quite clearly refers to people in regards to their sex, rather than their gender. You're making the mistake of assuming that he cares about gender, when sex is what he uses for his classification of male or female.

<comment><USER2> If he is classifying them as male and female and treating them as such, then both parts involve gender.

The first half involves judging people by appearance; unless he's running DNA tests, ultrasounds, and fondling everybody he meets before he uses a pronoun, then he his judging at least partly by how they present. That's gender.

The latter half, how he treats people based on his gender-presentation- mediated perceptions of sex, is pure gender, because there we're entirely out of the realm of biology and clearly into the social side of gender roles.

I understand why he (and apparently you) would like it to be simpler. It's more convenient _for him_ if everybody goes around hiding the complexity for him so he doesn't have to have a more accurate view of the world. But it's bunk. Pretending that it's "just" sex he's talking about is part of the way he hides, presumably also from himself, that it's bunk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Reg: But you can't have babies.

Stan: Don't you oppress me.

Reg: Where's the fetus going to gestate? You going to keep it in a box?

Francis: It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression.

Reg: It's symbolic of his struggle against reality.

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079470/quotes](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079470/quotes)

<comment><USER6> The sad thing is most people don't understand how frighteningly representative this is of much of today's social activism.

<comment><USER16> The weird thing is that I haven't seen all that many examples of reality- rejecting social activism, despite your claim that there is "much" of it. Are you sure you haven't just failed to understand what the people are actually saying?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Everyone seems proud of themselves for realizing that both sex and gender do not divide into two nice halves. I guess I have just taken it as a given that is how the world is.

Nevertheless, Facebook is still predicated on the the worst false dichotomy of all time: someone is either my friend or they are not my friend.

Do we need an entire generation of friendism movement to raise awareness the world is full of colleagues, acquaintances, etc. I know this doesn't matter for a lot of people, but for those of us with nonconforming relationships, being forced to choose a binary option as friend or not friend is disheartening.

It is the reason I quit Facebook.

<comment><USER18> Hmmm... I think trying to link binary friend to binary gender weakens an argument that is perfectly capable of standing on its own. (It's pretty obvious there's a huge range of "friend"ships in the real world.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> As I have a lot of friends in Facebook that I assume do not share the same language preferences than me (they are from around the world), this feature had made think about how hard internationalisation can be... I'm pretty sure than translating all the possible options, plus pronouns, etc, will be an interesting problem ;-)

PD: I've checked and the option is only available so far to users using US English interface, so not a problem currently. I can imagine it will be at some point.

<comment><USER20> Proper internationalization [1] is _really hard_. Seems like Facebook has done a great job though. The documentation [2] for this feature points out that if you choose "custom" gender, you need to choose your preference for male, female, or neutral pronouns.

[1]: Heh, I'm so used to typing i18n, that was weird to type out.

[2]: [https://www.facebook.com/help/276177272409629](https://www.facebook.com/help/276177272409629)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'd rather they just remove the box altogether.

But I'd also rather we just do away with the concept of gender. Sex is a thing, and is also non-binary. But "concept of gender" is something strange altogether.

<comment><USER22> Presumably the only reason for having it at all is that advertisers assume they need that information. In which case, 'Male', 'Female' and 'Other' would suffice. It's a pretty safe bet that if you don't identify as simply male or female, advertisers aren't going to bother caring about how to advertise to you.

<comment><USER5> I'm sure it serves other purposes too, even if they are as simple as displaying your sibling as "brother" vs. "sister", or your brother's children as "nephew" vs. "niece".

</comment></comment></comment><comment> vezzy-fnord Sincere question: Why would a transgendered person specifically want to identify as a "trans ___" as demonstrated in the screenshot? Wouldn't they simply want to identify as their preferred gender (male, female, neutral, etc.)?

I'd understand the importance of explicitly using trans as a distinction when, for example, speaking to a medical professional or discussing a social issue, but on a public profile?

<comment><USER23> Well, for some, trans* is their preferred gender. That is, the experience of transition forms part of their identity.

Compare, say, people who self-identify as "German-American" instead of simply "American".

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> When I worked at Peopleclick (HR applicant tracking software), we didn't go quite this far, but we had 7 gender options: Male, Female, M-F Trans, F-M Trans, Neuter, Other, and Declined To Identify. Which was pretty progressive for 14+ years ago.

</comment><comment><USER25> Putting on the mercenary hat for a moment, I wonder how this affects advertising targeting...

<comment><USER26> I wondered this too, but to be honest I imagine it's not a problem. LGBT is a small, fairly tightly defined group (compared to, say, men age 18-25) that skews in known directions (liberal, urban, etc).

<comment><USER27> _LGBT is a small, fairly tightly defined group_

Odd; most online and conventional media outlets are saying something completely different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Here's the announcement on Facebook:

[https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=567587973337709&set=...](https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=567587973337709&set=a.196865713743272.42938.105225179573993&type=1&stream_ref=10)

Solid step in the right direction.

Also, this is an area of sexual politics that is generally not well understood by the majority of people — being that the majority are not gay, trans, or otherwise off the traditional dipolar gender and sexual attration axis. I don't know about you, but I prefer not to comment on things I don't understand so as not to put my foot in my mouth or inadvertently cause real offense.

</comment><comment> k-mcgrady Good to see them do this but I'd have preferred if they'd come up with 3-5 different ways to describe gender that we could use across the web. Have 50 different customisable options is a pain to implement for everyone. Maybe I'm wrong though - can someone with more knowledge on this tell me whether that many options is really necessary?

<comment><USER2> As a comparison, look at the spectrum of race. How we look at it keeps changing. Could we get by with a binary? Sure, we could have "white" and "non- white". Could we do 3-5? Sure, that's what Brazil's government does. They have white, brown, black, yellow, and indigenous; you can pick one. [1] But people in Brazil don't really like that. It may serve the governmental need to have a simple system. But for the individuals expressing their racial identity, it doesn't really fit their self-perceptions, and they don't like having somebody else's categories imposed upon them.

If you are looking for a simple way to solve this problem, just drop gender from your system. If you really need to use pronouns, just use singular they [2] for everybody.

I think the second-simplest thing would be to not ask about gender, but to ask about what pronoun to use. Facebook's going with he/she/they, which isn't what every activist would want, but it's way better than a simple binary.

If you really need gender, then I'd probably follow the Facebook model; the alternative is to basically repeat Facebook's process of talking to a lot of people and finding some other workable solution.

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_Brazil#IB...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_Brazil#IBGE.E2.80.99s_racial_categories)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Damn, this doesn't work for me yet. I wanted to identify as a "just this nice uber trans-trans-awesome-guy".

<comment><USER29> It's progress at least.

Maybe someday there will be a setting for 'sexless elder god' so Cthulhu and the rest of the gang don't feel left out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Way to go, Facebook.

<comment><USER31> Now it's even easier to mine graphs for deviancy and persecution!

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I wonder if they will expose it on the public graph api?

This will make it really interesting to better infer parts of some peoples personalities with the rest of the data people want to share on facebook, and serving ads to demographics who are going to want to click on your ads because it conforms to their views.

Well played from a data-mining perspective.

</comment><comment><USER33> This is awesome!

Diaspora did this a few years ago too (more or less) [http://www.sarahmei.com/blog/2010/11/26/disalienation/](http://www.sarahmei.com/blog/2010/11/26/disalienation/)

</comment><comment><USER34> I wanted to put "Meat Popsicle" but they have pre-defined "custom" tags

<comment><USER35> I've been trying to enter "Alien Robot", but I keep getting an error. How do I even add a custom gender? Everything I put in gives an error.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Does anyone have a list of the 50+ options? No article seems to show them.

<comment><USER37> From [http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2014/02/13/male-female-or- custom...](http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2014/02/13/male-female-or-custom- facebook-announces-major-expansion-terms-to-identify/)

      Agender
      Androgyne
      Androgynous
      Bigender
      Cis
      Cis Female
      Cis Male
      Cis Man
      Cis Woman
      Cisgender
      Cisgender Female
      Cisgender Male
      Cisgender Man
      Cisgender Woman
      Female to Male
      FTM
      Gender Fluid
      Gender Nonconforming
      Gender Questioning
      Gender Variant
      Genderqueer
      Intersex
      Male to Female
      MTF
      Neither
      Neutrois
      Non-binary
      Other
      Pangender
      Trans
      Trans Female
      Trans Male
      Trans Man
      Trans Person
      Trans*Female
      Trans*Male
      Trans*Man
      Trans*Person
      Trans*Woman
      Transexual
      Transexual Female
      Transexual Male
      Transexual Man
      Transexual Person
      Transexual Woman
      Transgender Female
      Transgender Person
      Transmasculine
      Two-spirit

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> >50 different terms people can use to identify their gender

wow

</comment><comment><USER39> Custom...jedi. Your move FB.

</comment><comment><USER40> This is great, but we can take this a lot further. Submit pull requests to fix gender-binary assumptions in open source software.

If an engineer refuses to accept your PR, they are an insensitive asshole, and deserve the public criticism and dismissal from their job that will inevitably follow.

<comment><USER41> >dismissal from their job that will inevitably follow

That's a bit unrealistic.</comment></comment>


Dehumanization of cyclists predicts self-reported aggressive behaviour to them - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1369847818308593 <comment><USER2> I wonder where this begins. Is it learned at home (from a parent driver who complains about bikers a lot)? Is there a popular TV show where they keep making fun of bikers? Do people have one bad experience with a biker and just apply that to all bikers?

My driver's ed instructor had a saying that cyclists should be shot! It was a comedy line, yeah, but he kept repeating it...

<comment><USER3> I would like to start by saying I'm not against bicycles sharing the roads in anyway; I'm just attempting to explain the rationale for this kind of thinking in many people I know personally (in South Florida this is a hot button issue).

Most roads are built primarily for motor vehicles, so when you are driving a car, you are driving on a road that you paid for specifically to drive your car on, and somebody else is leisurely (except for in certain big cities, most bicycling miles are done for leisure or sport) enjoying the same road for free, on a bicycle, putting themselves at risk and putting some of the burden of their risk on you (if they veer into your lane and you hit them, good luck trying to get out of that).

A grossly exaggerated analogy would be seeing people come to your apartment complex and using the garbage chute as a slide for their kids to play on. If the kids are playing in the chute and you put garbage down it and injure one of them, you're on the hook. Imagine how this would make you feel, every time you see parents bringing their kids to play in the chute.

<comment><USER4> Huh, so you paid for the road and the cyclist didn't? I'm not an American, but I don't think there's a road tax for car owners in the US.

<comment><USER5> It's funny that the parent poster mentions this - it's likely that either the cyclist has a car, payed in the same manner as the driver and is in the moment using the road for "leisure or sport" - or the cyclist really needs to use the road and bike for transportation.

There really is no acceptable, rational reason for animosity towards cyclists. I think it comes down to the same gut instincts as racism, sexism and xenophobia - when there's a problem people look for whatever thing seems most different in their current surroundings and blame that thing for the problem. It's just a lack of thinking.

<comment><USER6> > _There really is no acceptable, rational reason for animosity towards > cyclists._

No rational reason for drivers in a road predominantly used from big vehicles to not like smaller, hard to see, vehicles with greater flexibility and much more fragile going around them?

The added care you need to have as a car driver, and danger they impose of accident, is not enough?

Especially since most of the time (e.g. in highways, interstates, etc) you get to have the road to just cars and don't have all this?

<comment><USER5> Being careful and aware of your surroundings is a prerequisite for driving. If you can't avoid small vehicles you need to get off the road.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a driver, a cyclist, and a pedestrian I thought about it a lot. I think it boils down to an interdependent combination of culture, infrastructure, and rules of the road and their enforcement.

First, it really helps if cycling infrastructure is separated from car and pedestrian infrastructure as much as possible. The more separation, the better. In Ottawa, for example, there are several dedicated cross-city bike trails, but not too many in Toronto, they are far and wide between, and it shows. It is not always possible and in that case I would give bicyclists preferential treatment on dedicated side streets.

The bike trails should be immediately visible to anyone, e.g. painted green for the full length. This makes it immediately visible for everyone: turning cars, passengers exiting the vehicle, pedestrians who decided to jaywalk and scanned the space for cars, but not bikes.

The road rules should be clear, strict and unambiguous for bikes. I understand that stopping at the STOP sign is inconvenient on a bike (losing momentum and balance, braking and pedaling up is hard), but cyclists should ignore stop sign if and only if there is no one else on the intersection. If there are cars, pedestrians, or other bikes crossing it, cyclists _must_ resort to the stop rule. I do not know how many times I have seen cyclists thinking this does not apply to them.

</comment><comment><USER8> Happens to pedestrians where cyclists are the majority too. It's dehumanizing turtles all the way down.

<comment><USER9> It happens anytime people are afraid of another group for any reason.

<comment><USER10> I'm not afraid of cyclists as a pedestrian nearly as much as I'm afraid of drivers when I'm a cyclist.

Conversely, whenever I'm on a bike, if pedestrians are present, I always slow down to walking speed, make sure they are aware of my presence and pass them safely and slowly.

I am awarded no such courtesy from drivers.

<comment><USER11> I think the issue with that different treatment is that, aside from the inconsistent availability of dedicated (and hopefully buffered) bike lanes, there aren't spaces "made for" bicycles. I hear arguments along the lines of "roads are made for cars", and I think people would nearly equally argue that "sidewalks are made for pedestrians", so cyclists can't really win: they're the unwelcome interloper wherever they are, and need to yield and watch out for the "intended" users of the space.

<comment><USER10> Pretty much this, yes.

No amount of courtesy and rule-following can compensate for a complete lack of biking infrastructure on like 95% of all commutes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Aggressive behavior against cyclists is unfortunately fairly common, but as a daily transportation cyclist I worry more about well-intentioned bad drivers. For example, these are the drivers who turn across the bike lane without checking for on-coming cyclists. It's not that these drivers don't consider cyclists as fully human. They're just bad drivers and probably have similar problems with other drivers. Cyclists are just more vulnerable to them.

<comment><USER13> I had an accident like this.

I was hauling ass down a one-way, two-lane street in the bike lane (shoulder). A woman in a sedan pulled in from a side street on the left, crossed into the right lane, then swerved across my lane to make a right turn into a shopping plaza.

I had no vector for escape, it was too sudden. I believed I would go through her right rear window and wind up in the car. Instead, the bicycle and I slammed laterally against her car and flew forward at her angle, my sternum striking her passenger-side mirror. As it happened, I thought it would kill me, but the mirror just exploded into a hundred pieces.

I landed on the ground with my bike next to her now-stopped vehicle, solar plexus aching but otherwise almost unharmed.

She was very apologetic. She said she had many friends who were cyclists, and she was aghast at the idea of hurting any of them. She told me if I was unhurt, and agreed not to request the police, she would happily absorb the damage to her vehicle (it was really badly damaged by my bike scraping over 4 feet of her paint).

After I caught my breath and realized I was unharmed, I told her it was a fair cop and we were good. But I will definitely never forget the terror I felt as I slammed into her.

<comment><USER12> Classic right hook: [http://bicyclesafe.com/#righthook](http://bicyclesafe.com/#righthook)

I've had many close calls like that, but fortunately have avoided collision. Drivers saying that they are "really pro-cycling" or whatnot means little to me now. If they were, you'd see it in their actions. That's not to say that mistakes don't happen, but "mistakes" happen so frequently to cyclists that it's hard to conclude anything other than that most drivers don't understand how to drive safely with cyclists on the road. Good intentions are not enough to be "pro-cycling" in my view.

For what it's worth, I would have called the police and requested an ambulance and I recommend the same for every bike crash, no matter how minor. (And I would have made it clear that the driver would be paying for all medical costs.) It helps make the police's statistics accurate, and adrenaline may prevent you from seeing how hurt you really are. Best to play it safe. I'd like to underline the importance of keeping the statistics accurate. I've talked to a city traffic engineer about how one intersection was dangerous and they said they weren't going to do anything about it because they received no reports of crashes there. I'm confident that they occur, but they're not reported to the city. Don't let being "nice" prevent safety improvements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't drive or cycle (on a regular basis), and I haven't been particularly exposed to generic rage towards cyclists. I don't think I see cyclists as any less human than cars and their drivers, or bikers for that matter. Yet of all the aforementioned groups, the only ones I've learned to be especially cautious of (and to which I linked negative preconceptions) are cyclists.

This was never a problem for me when living in the Netherlands, where there is good infrastructure and rules. (At least after getting past the phase where you simply need to adapt to the ridiculous number of bikes when compared to other countries).

After moving to Dublin, it doesn't matter if you're on the sidewalk, pedestrian-only bridges, or crossing a pedestrian crossing when the light is green, you always have to watch out for bikes because you never know when one is heading right into you, regardless of how many traffic rules they need to be breaking to do so. From my own anecdotal evidence I've learned to expect worse/reckless behavior from cyclists compared to any other road user.

I'm sure they aren't worse people that anyone else and this is probably aggravated by the severely lacking infrastructure over here, but I seriously doubt "dehumanization" is the root cause of the problem here (even if it may contribute to a vicious cycle). From a driver's perspective, better infrastructure would probably also make them stress less over accidentally causing serious harm to a cyclist over something that would otherwise be their fault.

That said, I don't have stats or studies to back any of this up and this is all assumed from my own observations.

</comment><comment><USER15> In my own experience I think a lot of this comes from both cyclists and cars not understanding the rules on how to interact with each other. For example, I see a lot of cyclists riding too far out in to the road, riding two abreast when there is not really a shoulder, not signaling properly or rolling through stop signs. And on the other side I see a lot of cars passing cars while cyclists are present or turning in front of cyclists.

I am an avid cyclist, and I think I probably get angrier than the average person when I see a cyclist breaking the rules cause I am thinking to myself "you are making the rest of us look bad."

<comment><USER16> In most places, cyclists are actually entitled to the full lane and are allowed to cycle two abreast.

<comment><USER17> Additionally, it is often safer to assert space on the road as a cyclist in order minimize the probability of being clipped by a car passing too closely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Just reading internet comments by drivers against cyclists would set your prior for that; the animosity is often off the charts.

<comment><USER19> And the comments here are no better than the usual, with the classic anti cycling tropes on full display: \- Don't pay (road tax) \- Illegitimate road user \- Riding abreast (in my jurisdiction this is legal and in many places it is and in fact encouraged as it makes a group of cyclists easier to pass) \- Stop signs/red lights/don't obey traffic rules (as if cyclists are the only group for which any of this is true)

<comment><USER20> The red light thing is always funny. Driver's just don't notice other driver's run red lights either because they're far away from the intersection, their view is obstructed by other cars, or they're just doing other things during a red light. I'd say, from my bike, I see a red light run once every 2 days and I only go through about 5 lights on the way to work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have to conclude I hate cyclists. This isn't something that just happened, but rather has been due to a long history of bad experiences with cyclists.

My earliest contempt for cyclists began in elementary school, where cyclist kids would just jump on their bikes and ride home while I had to slog through a long bus drive. Cyclist kids felt they were just better than others.

Then in college, cyclists going to and from class on their bicycles were annoying as hell. How many times I would just be walking minding my own business and a dude on a bike out of nowhere weaves through a crowd and just cuts across me nearly hitting me, and at an unsafe speed. I'm sure when you're riding a bike you have no idea how fast you're going, but as a pedestrian it's easy to see how close these individuals were to disaster. What if I had suddenly stepped in a different direction into the path of the bike?

As a careerist adult, cities are no better. I distinctly recall one time in New York City where I was about to cross an intersection when suddenly I heard someone shout, a cyclist was heading straight for me downhill and I jolted myself backward narrowly missing the bastard. He could have easily struck me down.

And then of course on the roadways there is always an anxiety when I see a cyclist. I have to make sure I move aside at least three feet and slow down considerably because I know if I hit them I'll probably be spending time in prison. I don't have a problem if you want to risk your life but you should have to accept the responsibility of your actions all on your own at that point.

<comment><USER22> > I know if I hit them I'll probably be spending time in prison

lol cyclists are dying left and right and barely anyone is going to prison. the privileged class (drivers in this case) will always protect their own.

<comment><USER23> Yeah, I like how they play the victim here. Amelie Le Moullac's death was totally normal in SF and it was covered up super hard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Not 100% on topic, but one of the pet peeves I have noticed with cyclists is quite a few of them do not obey the rules of the road. As vehicles, they have to stop at stop signs and lights, but feel like quite an appreciable percentage do not. I'm not saying drivers are entirely faultless, but feels like its to a lesser extent and not as flagrantly.

<comment><USER25> "to a lesser extent and not as flagrantly."

I'd wager a higher percentage of cyclists stop at all stop signs than motorists who strictly obey the speed limit.

<comment><USER12> Whenever I find myself in a conversation with a driver complaining about cyclists blowing through stop signs, I ask if they always follow the speed limit. Often I get a rant about how the speed limits are almost always too low.

As far as I can tell roughly the same percentage of cyclists break the law as drivers. Unfortunately most people take a selective view of this, ignoring what drivers do.

(I'm a cyclist who always stops at stop signs. In fact, I have helmet cam video of myself going through a cyclist stop sign enforcement operation without any issue from the police.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It used to be (circa late 1800s) that the word 'typewriter' referred to three things: 1) the machine itself 2) the operator of such a machine could be referred to as 'a typewriter' 3) the combination of the two, that is, the machine and the person driving the machine are a singular unit (which is also speculated to be one of the reasons for a major upsurge is 'ghost-possessed typewriter fiction' at the same time [the girl operating the machine might become more than mere instrumentation]. What this is getting at is (in contemporary america) I'll argue that it is the combination of the homosapien + an automobile that is defined as human. (Just look at how we derogatorily consider those who have to take mass transit because they do not possess [or are possessed by] an automobile, therefore cannot fully actualize themselves as human beings.)

</comment><comment><USER27> Cyclist vs. driver vs. pedestrian threads are always the same, which suggests we should just ban them.

</comment><comment><USER28> Gee, what a surprise. Also, I have some amazing news for you about "ironic" racism...

</comment><comment><USER29> And cyclists call people in cars "cagers", and presume they're all out to kill the cyclist. The only difference in the dehumanization is that people in cars can more easily kill people not in cars.

</comment><comment><USER30> In a past life I did somewhat serious cycling in rural Georgia as training for triathlons. So everything I'm about to say is with the caveat that it's my personal experience in one small slice of America.

Myself, and everybody I rode with, had stories of objects being thrown out of windows from passing cars in an attempt to hit you. Mainstay was was bottles but a friend did have a phonebook thrown at them. We laughed about that one...who has a phonebook these days and who keeps it in their car?

Had cars stop and try to start fights as well.

Consistently though, both while on the bike and in my social interactions with others, there is a close association between cyclists and liberals. The cycling was a visible qualifier but the anger, and not surprisingly, dehumanization, was driven more by their political and social leanings than any truly inherent dislike of cyclists.

</comment><comment><USER31> Cyclists

They're delaying me seconds at intersections, they're forcing me to spend more time checking that I don't door them, they leave their bikeshares on my sidewalks, and some ((I assume)) are good people.

</comment><comment><USER32> The unfortunate truth is that bicycles do no belong on the road with cars. The car/SUV weights 2000-5000 pounds and can go much faster than a bike. It is also heavily "armored", in that most car collisions do not result in serious injury to the occupants.

The bicycle has much lower weight, and lower speed. In addition, the majority of bicycle collisions are going to result in at least some minor injury.

The solution to this problem is to build protected bike lanes where cars cannot come. Unfortunately, there is not the political will to do it, so we go with this fiction that cars and bikes are equals, even though that results in a significant number of biker deaths.

<comment><USER12> > The solution to this problem is to build protected bike lanes where cars > cannot come. Unfortunately, there is not the political will to do it, so we > go with this fiction that cars and bikes are equals, even though that > results in a significant number of biker deaths.

There's actually quite a bit of opposition to separate infrastructure from cyclists. While the risk of being hit from behind is reduced on separate infrastructure, there has to be intersections at some point, and that's where the danger amplifies.

In Austin, I almost never ride on the Guadalupe St. cycletrack because about one third of the time that I do, a driver turns across it without looking at an intersection. There are signs saying to look, but that doesn't seem to stop the problems.

Infrastructure can help, but it needs to be designed well, and what I see typically in the US is not designed well.

</comment></comment><comment> xkcd-sucks Can't we just force everyone to ride motorcycles? That would be a rare compromise that makes both sides happy!

</comment><comment><USER33> This is completely foreign to me coming from a country/city where bicycles are the norm.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is why I avoid helmets.

</comment><comment><USER35> My main problem with cyclists as both a pedestrian and in a vehicle comes from them seemingly arbitrarily deciding when they're a vehicle and when they're a pedestrian.

They'll blow through stop signs and red lights, then yell at you for being in their way, they'll illegally turn in front of your vehicle, then yell at you for not giving them the right of way, they swerve through traffic changing lanes without signaling then again, will get angry with you when you have to slam on your brakes to avoid killing them, they'll go back and forth between the sidewalk and street without paying attention to pedestrians or cars and yelling at anyone that gets in their way.

My experience has been, they wish to be treated like pedestrians, as in, have the right of way whenever they want, whether it's with a vehicle or an actual pedestrian, until they decide they're actually a vehicle.

For me, when i'm on a bike, i'm a vehicle. I obey traffic laws, yield to cars much of the time, because they will crush me and give pedestrians the right of way at intersections. Cyclists that don't do these things piss me off.

ETA: This may have come across like I was targetting all cyclists. I meant, the ones that do things like this are the ones I have a problem with. There's plenty of cyclists I see more often that don't do things like this. I have no problem with them I don't judge them as a group. I dislike in general when people do dangerous things on the road. Whatever vehicles they're in or not in. These just so happen to be the shitty things i've experienced cyclists doing that bug me.

<comment><USER36> When someone's in a car and they see someone else in a car blow through a red light, they say something along the lines of 'that person's an idiot'. When they someone on a bike do it, they say 'cyclists are idiots'.

If I count how many laws people in cars break when I drive home tonight - speeding, illegal parking, etc. - I'll run out of fingers and toes.

Ultimately the worst thing someone on a bike can do to me in a car is cause me a delay. The worst thing I can do to them is kill them. So I give them the benefit of the doubt.

<comment><USER37> There are a lot less cyclers than drivers, and cyclists are more likely to run redlights or stops signs than drivers.

<comment><USER38> That is wrong: [https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/01/03/study-cyclists- dont-b...](https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/01/03/study-cyclists-dont-break- traffic-laws-any-more-than-drivers-do/)

<comment><USER37> One study involving 100 cyclists in one city is not conclusive at all. Also, the cyclists knew they were being tracked and monitored so they probably were more adherent to traffic laws during this study.

Anecdotally, I have seen a lot higher percentage of cyclists breaking traffic laws than drivers, and it seems a lot of people have observed that in their own day to day life also.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Git Legit - <AUTHOR> http://www.git-legit.org/? <comment><USER2> 299 days ago - 132 comments: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3752447>

168 days ago - 26 comments: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4332971>

Not complaining at all about the repost, but I remembered previous discussions and people may find comments of interest there.

<comment><USER3> Offtopic - I like this style of repost notice, thanks.

(Since this forum closes comments after N days on an article, reposts are the only way to continue discussion, however, context about previous discussions is always nice!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This may be useful for a single beginner working only on their own projects, but I don't really want to be dealing with users submitting pull requests that they've made using a tool that tries to be clever about rebasing and merging. Unless it's right 100% of the time there's going to be a lot of difficult merge work to be done by the acceptor, that the submitter is unlikely to be able to understand how to do if they've been relying on a crutch. They may think they are using git, and see their code appear on github, but for the purpose of patch reviewers/mergers they are using a totally different version control system that can't properly talk to normal git users.

<comment><USER5> I have to agree here. The functionality it replaces really is not complicated. All you do by abstracting it is ensure that when things go wrong the user has absolutely no idea how to fix it. People should just take the minimal time required to learn git.

<comment><USER6> This project is not intended for beginners. It is intended to save typing for a particular git workflow.

<comment><USER7> Some friendly, candid feedback: If Legit is not intended for beginners, why not say so on the project page?

"Git Workflow for Humans" "optimized for workflow simplicity" "branch workflows are dead simple" "Nice and simple – the way it should be"

As Legit is now described at www.git-legit.org, what would suggest to beginners that it's anything but the answer to their prayers?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Oh fantastic!

More stupid terminology. Just what git needs.

switch, checkout, pull, push, commit, stash, branch, tag, fetch, merge, log, reflog, tree, clone, rebase, squash and cherry pick

isn't enough! let's add

publish, unpublish, harvest, sprout and graft

<comment><USER9> The problem with the existing terminology is that it isn't logical. git reset for example, does three separate things. Rebase is described as "Forward-port local commits to the updated upstream head" - something which makes no sense if you don't know about git's internals.

<comment><USER10> The thing about git is that the key concepts of its internals are sufficiently clean and sufficiently fundamental to distributed version control that they are both easy to understand and very useful to understand.

So what you say isn't really true. I would improve it to say that the existing terminology doesn't _appear_ logical until you have learned about those basics. This is not the fault of git: any system becomes incomprehensible if you approach it with concepts in your head that are incompatible with that system.

A complete beginner may not want to start out by learning those internals, and that's okay. But at some point, it definitely becomes a worthy investment to take the mere hour or two that it takes to read through the relevant parts of the documentation.

<comment><USER9> It's nothing to do with being decentralised or not. There are decentralised version control systems with better command line interfaces. Some of them even predate git. Mercurial has a better interface. So does darcs.

<comment><USER11> Strongly disagree that Mercurial has a better interface. I've worked on projects in cvs, svn, git, and hg, and I have to say I found hg's interface nearly as confounding as cvs.

Not wanting to argue which perspective is _right_ , just that you can't make a broad sweeping statement that Mercurial has a better interface

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Really not a fan of "sprout", "harvest" or "graft". They're not descriptive of what's happening just by their name.

<comment><USER6> Open a GitHub issue. I wouldn't be against removing.

In practice, the only ones I use are sync, publish, and unpublish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is a nice little tool, however the problem I see with it is that if you learn how to use it, you'll be completely lost as soon as you move to a different computer. You'll basically always have to install it everywhere, but sometime that's not possible. It's much better to learn how to properly use git from the start. Also it's just not that hard to use, so I'm not sure it's useful to add another layer of abstraction.

<comment><USER14> I've heard the argument used against any editor that's not vi (and once against any editor that wasn't notepad), and against the use of source control it's self - "cvs won't be on every machine, it's better to just learn to use tarballs and patch files." (Not joking)

Most people as a normal part of their job can indeed install software on their development machines. And those that can't won't even be looking at new software projects - what would be the point?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> So basically this is a way to change git's verbs? I haven't ever found them _that_ obtrusive. No worse than learning some language syntax

<comment><USER6> This project is all about workflow. The workflow provided by 'git sync' normally takes five commands:

$ git stash $ git fetch $ git merge origin/$current-branch $ git push origin $current-branch $ git unstash

It's actually slightly fancier than that, the push actually reduces merge commits but doesn't rewrite your merges. Same as GitHub for Mac.

<comment><USER15> Actually it's just $ git pull --rebase

If you do have local changes, then you would need to git stash/stash --pop before/after that command. I use rebase to keep down on unneeded merges for the common case of having exactly one upstream and not merging several branches together.

<comment><USER6> If you simplify like so, it is still push and pull. One less thing to type.

<comment><USER11> I'll never understand this subset of the development community who is obsessed with saving a few keystrokes. It almost invariably comes at the cost of flexibility, and creates a set of developers who only know the abstraction.

I'm looking at you, jQuery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'll also chime in to complain that it's just a cutesy oversimplification of Git. Git's a really powerful tool, and you should learn it. If you don't feel like incurring the cost of mastering pure Git, and want to use some abstraction layer on top of it to get your work done, then it's on you when those abstractions break or the workflows become far too restrictive. You can plan workflows as much as you want, and they'll work about 85% of the time, the there's 10% of the time you'll need to do crazy shit with Git, and another 5% of the time you may have to do some actual disaster recovery with the reflog. Unfortunately, the percent of time it takes to really master these skills are inverted. But if you're using Git's core functionality, it's a lot better practice in conceptualizing the harder functionalities.

<comment><USER17> What kind of unreal world are you living in? Do you deal with normal programmers, you know, the kind who don't read HN and are more interested in their paycheck? The kind that are normal employees and not geeky?

For them, Git is a mystery that just doesn't seem to be able to be mastered, no matter how much reading, training and practice you get them to do. I spend my life consulting with such firms and I've introduced Git to each, but only at one have they managed to keep using it without screwups.

Anything that would simplify Git for the ordinary mortal human being, who wants to use it for team collaboration and to have a change history and a branching/merging model that works (unlike SVN), would be greatly welcomed. As it stands it's great for uber-coders/HN readers (those it was designed for), but for normal people...

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am less interested in legit and more interested in how they extended git to make it so all their new commands worked.

<comment><USER19> You don't need to extend git; the git command "git $FOO" just runs the command git-$FOO; git-commit, git-add, etc. are the binaries that do a lot of the work. In this case, I imagine they install binaries like git-sync, git-graft, etc. when you run "legit install".

<comment><USER20> Is this a vulnerability in some way? Like could I replace someone's git-add binary to expose private source code? It scares me that someone can change my git behavior so easily.

<comment><USER21> If someone can replace your `git-add` binary or put their own in a directory earlier in your $PATH, they can do the same with `git`, `ls` or any other program.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Amongst the usual HN negativity, I'll say that this is nice. Any project aiming at lowering the bar of entry for proper DVCS is more than welcome. And all the commands make sense once you're in the "tree/branches/organism" frame of mind.

</comment><comment><USER23> There is legit install, but no legit uninstall ? It is as simple as editing the aliases to remove what is unnecessary. But would have expected it to be there.

<comment><USER24> Clearly it is too legit to quit!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I feel one would benefit from learning the few simple commands of git versus this abstraction.

once this abstraction leaks (and it will), one will be forced to the git docs anyways.

my $0.02

<comment><USER6> This project is not intended to be an additional porcelain layer on top of Git, but a simple workflow tool.

> Legit is a complementary command-line interface for Git, optimized for > workflow simplicity. It is heavily inspired by GitHub for Mac.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I get that some of the commands are meant to have some connection with "the trees concept", but I doubt these terms are easier to remember than standard git comments.

Some are much clearer though, especially switch, sync and publish.

</comment><comment><USER27> Shameless plug for my own Python git wrapper, grit:

<http://rsgalloway.github.com/grit/>

</comment><comment><USER28> Wondering whether straight install for cygwin would work... Well I guess I have to try.

</comment><comment><USER29> legit's "git branches" reminds me of git-wtf, which has saved me many times: <http://git-wt-commit.rubyforge.org/>

</comment><comment><USER30> Seems legit!</comment>


Shelley: macOS menu bar app that runs shell scripts upon authorized HTTP request - <AUTHOR> https://tyler.io/shelley/ <comment><USER2> I have an iOS Shortcut that SSHs into my Mac and runs scripts. It's pretty simple; I only use it to remotely launch/quit Slack, but I could probably do a lot more if I had a reason to.

It's cool to see somebody else mention Hazel. I love that app—it's one of the most useful apps I have—but nobody else seems to use it.

<comment><USER3> Like the author said. I have no clue what to use Hazel for. Keyboard Maestro I get.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> you can do that with pure nginx/apache or almost any webserver as well, it's called CGI

<comment><USER5> The first programming work I ever did was with CGI, about 25 years ago, writing bash scripts to control playing MP3s using webmin's HTTP server (I think Apache was too complex for me to figure out how to setup at the time).

I'd be lying if I said I was't a bit sad that we've gone so far that CGI isn't even in the thought process for this problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> cool hack, but remember to turn this off at untrusted networks.

<comment><USER7> or just add a https proxy before it before it..., even better, use a https tunnel service like ngrok to allow automating stuff from anywhere not only from your local LAN.</comment></comment>