Ask HN: Minimalist Web Framework for Haskell? - <AUTHOR>

I am beginning a senior design project at CU-Boulder, where we work with local businesses to create a year-long project to be used by said businessess. Most of the past projects have been nothing to write home about.
Screw that.
I want to do something sweet, and get some experience repping a product.
Does the HN community think that a minimalist web framework for Haskell could gain traction?
I was thinking a routing based framework similar to Sinatra or Node.js. Are there enough Haskell devs or willing-to-be-Haskell-devs out there for this product to be useful?
Any other ideas for that matter? <comment><USER2> There's Happstack too: <http://happstack.com/index.html> . That said, there are quite a few little Haskell web frameworks/libraries floating around already, so unless you're bringing something absolutely amazing to the table compared to what's there now, I don't see much point in building yet another Haskell web framework.

Looking at the course ( I take it this is what you are talking about? <http://www.cs.colorado.edu/ugrad/seniorproject/> ), it seems that your project is based on a proposal from a sponsor, so I'm not sure why you're trying to come up with something already.

I don't know why you have a problem with the past projects. That a couple of undergrads can put together a working, useful (I presume), application is freaking awesome! I wouldn't dare assume a random CS major fresh out of university could pull something like that off.

</comment><comment><USER3> Haskell on a Horse (HoH) is a combinatorial web framework for the programming language Haskell. It is currently at an early, unsettled stage of development. It is available under the "BSD3" open-source license.

<http://haskell.on-a-horse.org/>

</comment><comment><USER4> Have you looked at snap, or yesod?

<http://snapframework.com/>

<http://docs.yesodweb.com/></comment>


Total Deaths (Covid and non-Covid) across several countries - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html <comment><USER2> As an improvement I would recommend simply showing a graph of, say, the past 5 years death rate, adjusted for population. I'm not sure how to understand expected deaths (who expected it?). What I want to know is how this year's death count compares to a bad year. With a new virus on the loose it makes sense that more people would die than last year's relatively calm fly season. I recall seeing a graph of death rate for the past 5 years for NYC in particular, but not a general one.</comment>


Warner Bros puts whole movie up as an ad on Youtube - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/teenagers/comments/9zls88/i_got_the_entire_lego_movie_as_an_ad_on_youtube/ <comment><USER2> I saw this once, but it was an episode of the TV show _The Detour_.</comment>


FBI: A person engaged in the same activity might face consequences - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2016/07/05/no-charges-are-appropriate-statement-by-fbi-director-comey-on-clinton-email-probe/ <comment><USER2> And to think we used to give China a hard time about The Rule of Law.</comment>


Want to know how Brexit will work? Play Football Manager - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/18/want-to-know-how-brexit-will-work-play-football-manager <comment><USER2> Pretty interesting stuff! I'm kind of keen to play it now</comment>


Show HN: Lonenote App - Make handwritten notes to share moments alone - <AUTHOR> http://lonenote.com <comment><USER2> Seems like a private version of PostSecret [[http://postsecret.com/](http://postsecret.com/)]

EDIT: Just an observation.

</comment><comment><USER3> Suggestions:

1) There is entirely too much text when the app starts up. I thought it was the typical EULA scroll-down-and-hit-agree text and didn't bother to read any of it (this feeds into the point below which I'm guessing this more than 1 page of text mentioned).

2) Taking a photo and adding some text _immediately_ uploads to the public server without saying anything about "Send Message"/"Uploading" or any kind of notification or warning. Looks like as soon as I add text its public with no way to delete either? This is a big problem. Fortunately I chose a harmless non-personal image to test with but people are going to end up uploading images that are sensitive or something they didn't want to upload without even realizing they're doing it. This is bad. Now give me a minute to revoke this app's photo album permissions/delete the app before it decides to upload some more photos without any warning..

<comment><AUTHOR> These are really good points, thank you. Adding a delete button as we speak, and soon will add more messaging to make things clearer.

<comment><USER3> I sounded a bit harsh earlier but the upload without warning caught me by surprise. Good to see you're responsive to issues and good luck with the project.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Delete button added :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Way cool! The handwriting feature is very well done, and seems like a decent barrier to entry for copycats.

One critique - when I was trying to write letters that required multiple strokes, such as 'i' or 't', oftentimes the screen would scroll away from me as I was trying to do the second stroke, and I would make a mess. Maybe it should disable writing while the text is scrolling? Maybe a sine-interp on the movement to make it a little more predictable?

Once I figured out to pause as I wrote to let it finish scrolling, I was confused that sometimes my last letter was still visible, but other times I had to scroll backwards to dot my 'i' or cross my 't'. The undo and scroll commands are very good, but ideally I wouldn't _have_ to use them them unless I made a mistake.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is super awesome feedback. Definitely been thinking a lot about how to improve handwriting input and your thoughts are spot on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> FYI the screen with the longish text and the sunset switches a bit too fast for me to comfortably read the text, which I think might annoy some visitors. Maybe swap text for something a bit shorter? Might help with user mood which might positively nudge downloads a bit :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Super helpful feedback, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Downloaded it. Experience is a bit strange, ex: swipe down to refresh doesn't appear to do anything, then after a 1 min lag it refreshes the content. I love being able to handwrite on my photos, but really hate not being able to save my own stuff. Also, seems there's no way to be updated when people comment on or like your content? Had to delete it. Hopefully the 2nd run smooths some of this out :) Still, the handwriting alone was very cool.

<comment><AUTHOR> Appreciate the feedback. Totally agree with you, need to improve the content loading experience, allow saving, and add notifications. Thanks for giving the app a try.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There was a website like this some time ago, people would anonymously post an image and paragraph, others would comment, identified only by an animal avatar. It was called something like weareeverybody.com or something, but it is no more. Seems pretty interesting -- I'm not sure that the "alone" requirement is necessary though. It seems photo + handwritten note provides the necessary context.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. I agree that "alone" may not be a requirement for an app like this. Alone is an experience that really resonated with me, in particular because of having spent a lot of time hacking on things solo. One hope is that by sharing this experience, we might feel a little less lonely when we are alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Loneliness sharing. I can see teens using this app :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment. I hope it becomes a safe and supportive place for people to share this experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Talk about niche... I really don't get the desire to (solely) "express their moments alone."

</comment><comment><USER10> I could see a usecase for Snapchat-esque sending of an image+note with a friend, where the note is private between the two of you (obviously it doesn't expire like SC though).

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice.. great idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I love writing by hand in my journal and sending cheesy postcards to my friends, so this is very interesting. Looking forward to the Android version!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Be right back, upgrading instance on DigitalOcean!

<comment><AUTHOR> ...and we're back!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I like this a lot. I hope this avoids Chatroulette syndrome.

Any plans for that?

<comment><USER12> Clarification: I hope this stays unmarred by overly pornographic self indulgence. (Didn't mean to down on CR directly so harshly...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Really like this. Looking forward to using it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Looking forward to having you be part of it! :)</comment></comment>


Apple Acquires Augmented Reality Company Metaio - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/28/apple-metaio/ <comment><USER2> Can you recommend any alternatives to Junaio?

Free app for the users. 3D, animated, interactive.</comment>


Organic GMOs Could Be the Future of Food – If We Let Them - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/backchannel/organic-gmos-could-be-the-future-of-food-if-we-let-them-fe304aa89554?curator=MediaREDEF <comment><USER2> I was working in the fertilizer business when GMO seed was first introduced. I thought then and still do now that it was an incredible scientific achievement.

I knew then we would use fewer chemicals and safer chemicals in food production. It is beyond debate that this is true but the opponents do not seem to be deterred.

<comment><USER3> I don't debate that genetic modification and the resulting plants are an achievement. However, the idea of patenting a genetic sequence is absurd and unnatural.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Although, in general, I support GMOs, it's too early for us to predict all things that can go wrong with them. I'm tired of articles generalizing that if 10 GMOs are okay, then all GMOs should be okay, too. Also, it's against the humane science to feed massive populations without adequate testing. And, last, but not least - if a farmer wants to use GMOs and his neighbor farmer does not, how can the former guarantee that he won't infect the crops of the latter? How can anyone guarantee that GMO crops won't spread beyond the boundaries of the farm and thus violate the IP of the GMO inventor? Also, pairing a GMO with targeted pesticide is also highly debatable!

<comment><USER2> In the US all the GMO's go through years of testing by the government. It can take up to ten years to get approved, to me that is a fair compromise as to potential future problems. From the earliest testing in the early eighties we're going on 25+ years of data right now.

Neighbors and GMO's are a trickier problem. For seed fields there's a set distance to prevent cross pollination. In practice for a row crop farmer if I have say an organic farmer neighbor I use something different on the 12 rows next to his fence. There is no law saying that I have to do it but in my experience there are few problems.

The company I worked for had a custom spraying business and it was law that we had to give notice to any registered organic farmer if our sprayers were anywhere near them. If they asked us to change our schedule we'd do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> We should follow russia's example.</comment>


NPR's Planet Money Podcast: Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/07/13/137795648/the-tuesday-podcast-bitcoin

<comment><AUTHOR> Features discussion with Gavin Andresen (bitcoin developer), Bruce Wagner, Benjamin Friedman (economist at Harvard), Ronald Mann (law at Columbia) and covers the basics of bitcoin, legality, and even mentions recent events (including MtGOX's recent problems).</comment>


Googles data tentacles burrow deeper into smart phone with expanded voice contr - <AUTHOR> http://pando.com/2015/05/01/googles-data-tentacles-burrow-deeper-into-smart-phone-apps-with-expanded-voice-control/

<comment><AUTHOR> The article is so comically paranoid that I can't even be sure it's not some extremely dry attempt at satire.</comment>


Netflix: Benchmarking High Performance I/O with SSD for Cassandra on AWS - <AUTHOR> http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/07/benchmarking-high-performance-io-with.html?source=HN

<comment><USER2> Seems like great benefits; The hi1.4xlarge configuration is about half the system cost for the same throughput. The mean read request latency was reduced from 10ms to 2.2ms. The 99th percentile request latency was reduced from 65ms to 10ms.

</comment><comment><USER3> more "hi1.4xlarge" info: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4264754></comment>


Kid Cannabis  - <AUTHOR> http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/7683923/kid_cannabis

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the key quote in this article is: "In the end, Nate was not undone by his own greed but by overlooking one of the basic tenets of capitalism: Never underestimate the competition."</comment>


How strict are you regarding test coverage when you're building an MVP? - <AUTHOR>

What's your philosophy on test coverage while building out your MVP (aka prototype/alpha/v1 or whatever you prefer to call it)? <comment><USER2> I write integration tests so I know when something is seriously f __* up but I don 't try to have unit tests for everything. If the startup goes well someone will be dedicated to that in the future.</comment>


A Real Programmer Who Never Learned C - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@wilshipley/the-absolutely-true-story-of-a-real-programmer-who-never-learned-c-210e43a1498b#.k11teq8cn <comment><USER2> Its a great little snapshot of life.

</comment><comment><USER3> Massive clickbait title. It's a story about Dennis Richie.

<comment><USER4> Please do not spoil the joke.

<comment><USER5> Seriously, there is a difference between a Buzz Feed title to try to draw viewers into a site that needs ad revenue and a well titled story that has an interesting twist.

<comment><USER6> The twist wasn't that interesting. I was expecting the article to continue into something with meat.

<comment><USER5> That's ok, not everyone has to think it was interesting. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: FAANG employees, how are the recent stock declines impacting you? - <AUTHOR> The past decade has been very good for tech stocks, in particular for FAANGs where constantly rising prices bolstered generous compensation packages. Very strong stock performance has helped recruitment, morale, and retention in FAANGs.
However, now the RSU-heavy compensation policy is being tested, with Facebook and Netflix down over 33%, Amazon declining over 25%, and Google declining 20%.
For many employees, and especially engineers, these declines translate to severe compensation cuts.
What is the impact of these declines on you and your co-workers?
Is your employer responding in any way to the fact that your compensation is suffering deep cuts?
Are there any observed or expected impacts on recruiting, retention, and morale, particularly as RSU-heavy compensation packages lose some of the fairy-dust they carried for so long? <comment><USER2> Being down X% after a pretty serious bull run isn't really a big issue.

I'm not relying on stock sales to fund general living expenses, rather the stock tends to be more about savings, since the base is pretty generous as well. So it's not really top of mind for me

It generally doesn't come up on our team tbh.

<comment><USER3> I realize the declines likely don't impact living budgets, for the reasons you stated.

However, I am wondering about issues like morale, and especially recruiting and retention.

As you know, competition for talent is quite intense right now, especially for the kind of talent FAANG employees have. You see it both in attempts to recruit new and current employees.

I'm wondering if there's any increase in poaching, or tougher competition on new talent against employers offering more of a cash component.

Of course, some of these effects may only be apparent in a few months, once year-end bonuses are paid.

<comment><USER2> Anecdotally, compensation is much more of an issue for new hires than existing employees. I've also just seen far more internal movement, both to and from our team, than I have people leaving to other companies, though our team has been growing and getting external hires too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's why you should always negotiate hard on the base salary and signing bonus. These are guaranteed money not like RSU's.

To answer your question, simply switch FAANG's when the market is down so you enter at a low price. That's what I've seen so far...

<comment><USER3> > _That 's why you should always negotiate hard on the base salary and signing > bonus. These are guaranteed money not like RSU's._

The two FAANGs I have personal experience with aren't very flexible when it comes to base salary, though. In both cases, during offer negotiations, I was told the base salary is strictly tied to levels of seniority in the organizational hierarchy, so there's effectively no room for maneuvering there.

RSUs were much more flexible, especially after the first couple of years.

RSUs were also a more important part of the compensation. My initial package in one FAANG was about 55% RSUs, 45% cash, and I was told that going forward my RSU component will increase even further, and in particular most bonuses and raises will be granted in RSUs.

So I'm not sure "negotiating hard" is a viable strategy in FAANG compensation discussions. They can be quite generous with RSUs, but cash policy is often strict and inflexible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think most people have taken it pretty well, since a majority of employees got their grants priced before the bull market of the last few years. It does really suck though if your grant was priced in August (like mine), which is an instant 20% pay cut.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't work at one of the named companies, but do work at a company with RSU- heavy compensation that is currently down some 25%. It seems that many of my coworkers are considering now that our compensation is cut, but that we are getting cheap grants now. Our grants are sized as a percentage of our base salary divided by the current price. Today's stock grants will be worth just as much as past ones but they will have the advantage of higher growth potential with market gains.

<comment><USER7> I don't know where you work, but as someone who has been in the industry 20 years - keep in mind - stocks don't always go up, and stocks can go to 0. I agree in general that getting more shares is better than getting less, but it's not a guaranteed win.

<comment><USER3> That's a good comment. The best case scenario for tech employees is that this is just a temporary correction, and the bull market will resume after this short break.

This seems to be the implicit assumption in GP, for example.

However, there's no certainty that will be the case. The next few years could be a sustained bear market, in which stock prices appreciate very modestly.

And while I wouldn't worry about stocks "going to 0" at a big corporation like Amazon, it's certainly possible for the smaller tech companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Increases and declines are less interesting unless there is a structural issue with the company. It's if the stock price stays flat which is when you should be concerned... buybacks etc... lack of growth.. things like that need to be considered.

<comment><USER3> There's a good chance that after a very long bull market, we are entering a bear market in which stock price will stay flight or even slowly decline for a long time.

P/E ratios are too high, particularly for tech stocks, and the entire US equity market will eventually have to go through a bear market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The only one down in the past year is facebook and not by much. If you are only looking a few months back in the stock market, you are looking at it wrong.

<comment><USER10> Where should one begin? There are going to be new folks accepting offer from FAANG, where/when should they begin to look?

<comment><USER9> In a year or 2 when you are getting refreshers/compensation adjustments.

Netflix doesn't give stock so the stock price does not really effect them. All the rest will give you extra stocks if the stock price drops enough that it brings you below your target compensation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Personally, I am waiting for GOOG stock to drop, partly in relationship to my essay.</comment>


Anthropologists Say Gladiators and Soldiers in Ancient Rome Were Vegetarian - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3761927/ <comment><USER2> An interesting hypothesis, but I have a hard time buying it. If everyone around them is eating meat, where's the motive for them to abstain?

> Plants contain higher levels of strontium than animal tissues. People who > consume more plants and less meat will build up measurably higher levels of > strontium in their bones.

How can we rule out that they weren't just eating tons of strontium-rich meat like seafood and less strontium-deficient meat like chicken? Or that they weren't just eating WAY MORE plant carbs than your average person being warriors and all? Maybe gladiators were like marathon runners and were always carb-loading to pack calories. That would effectively multiply their plant over meat intake by orders of magnitude. But just because marathon runners eat way more grains than meat doesn't mean they are vegetarians.

<comment><USER3> Agreed... given the training regimes, they were probably consuming more than twice the amount of total food of people today. Which likely means they are eating a lot of foods from barley, etc. That doesn't preclude the intake of meat. Beyond that, it's 0.8-1.2g of protein are recommended _MINIMUM_ daily intake to avoid diseases originating from protein deficiencies. At 220# that means 80-120g protein as a minimum. That's a fair amount, and far more than you're likely to get from vegetarian sources at the time alone.

There's also a minimum amount of essential fatty acids to consider... at the time it's not like they had canola oil. So there was definitely animal products in their diets. Revisionist theories in order to support a vegetarian agenda are pretty annoying to me. A lot of it doesn't even pass a common sense sniff test.

IIRC Barley + Lentils can give you a complete protein profile, and it's possible that maybe 1/3-1/2 of their protein intake was from non-meat sources. But I seriously doubt that even a significant minority were abstaining from meat.

<comment><USER4> > Beyond that, it's 0.8-1.2g of protein are recommended MINIMUM daily intake > to avoid diseases originating from protein deficiencies.

Eating below the minimum RDA of 0.8 g/kg is unlikely to cause diseases of protein deficiency. The RDA minimum is fairly generous to allow for a certain margin of error. Most of the studies cited by [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK234922/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK234922/) indicate that 0.6 g/kg is likely a sufficient reference, and that a recommendation of 0.75 g/kg allows for enough confidence to cover individual variation. There was one study cited which found a 0.8 g/kg minimum, but most of the rest found that lower values should be sufficient; it sounds like 0.8 was picked just to be on the safe side.

> At 220# that means 80-120g protein as a minimum. That's a fair amount, and > far more than you're likely to get from vegetarian sources at the time > alone.

I doubt that most Roman soldiers were 220#. The minimum height requirement was 5'5", and estimates are that the average height was 5'7".

> There's also a minimum amount of essential fatty acids to consider... at the > time it's not like they had canola oil.

There's a certain vegetable oil that Rome and Italy are quite well known for.

I'm with you on being skeptical that they were vegetarian, but I think you're overstating the requirements a little bit. I think it's fairly likely that they ate a fairly low meat diet just due to the logistical difficulties of obtaining fresh meat or carrying preserved meat.

<comment><USER5> Olive oil is relevant:

 _The word "linoleic" derived from the Greek word linon (flax). Oleic means "of, relating to, or derived from oil of olive" or "of or relating to oleic acid" because saturating the omega-6 double bond produces oleic acid._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linoleic_acid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linoleic_acid)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ethical and environmental debates aside, I chose to be a vegetarian 10 years ago as a way of forcing myself to have diversity in what I consume. It was too easy to fall into the trap of eating junk.

Giving up meat doesn't ensure health by any stretch, but it does force you to consider and plan what you eat. It's worked out well for me.

aside: dietary preferences aren't an affront to someone else's lifestyle or eating decisions. I don't judge meat eaters, I hope you won't judge those who choose not to.

<comment><USER7> I recently started preferring the vegetarian option over the non-veg one. And what you say exactly is the same problem I am facing, having to come up with what to eat. With meat its really easy to come up with what to eat, but whenever I try to think of something vegetarian it gets hard.

Do you have any tips for someone starting to switch to a vegetarian diet? Especially when it comes to variety and how I can do this a bit easier?

<comment><USER8> Look into Indian cooking. They've lots of delecious vegetarian cuisines.

<comment><USER9> This is certainly true, but Indian cooking is a commitment. You need to have several spices on hand (turmeric, cumin seeds, mustard seed, both coriander seed and powder, fenugreek, kashmiri chili, cinnamon bark, asafoetida, a decent garam masala, fresh or frozen curry leaves); you will need to understand how to grind these spices and then temper them in oil or ghee; you will need to have a variety of legumes (split dried chickpeas, split dried mung bean, red lentils); you will also need basmati rice and yogurt; you might like to have tamarind and mango pickle; you will need the ability to constantly mash together ginger, garlic, and fresh chili; you must have the capacity to finely chop onions.

Indian food has subtleties, and it's not easy for the beginner.

<comment><USER10> South indian food is super simple at the core level - heat oil, add mustard seeds, when they pop, add asefoteda/fenugreek & curry / spices (I buy them at a local Indian store - usu. curry + cayenne), then whatever veggies you want (green beans or potatoes are nice)

<comment><USER11> You forgot cumin seeds. Add some coconut milk and you get an excellent dish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The real issue with meat was that it spoils easily on a military campaign and it's hard to be cured on campsites. That's logistic 101, the nutritionist angle is not needed and borderline revisionistic.

If you prefer citations instead of logic "The logistic of Roman army at war" by Roth also gives out all the needed information and points to the archeological evidence.

The provided food was what could be transported, while the foraged included game and other meats, in moderations because of costs, spoiling, and other.

</comment><comment><USER13> The article says the higher levels of strontium in their bones is from vegetables, but this source[1] says it's from consuming a tonic of plant ashes after their fights. They're trying to then correlate this to vegetarianism, but it's unrelated: they were artificially increasing their strontium-calcium ratio.

It's pretty well documented that bread and porridge were the staple foods of the Roman world[2]. You could mix anything into your porridge, from vegetables and dried fruits to expensive things like olive oil, meat and fish. Garum, a fish-based condiment, was put on everything.

Their higher carb intake is probably not because they were avoiding meat or protein, but because they just _needed more calories_ , and carbs like grains and beans are a cheap plentiful source of them. There were many different kinds of gladiator from all walks of life, so it's insane to think at least _some_ didn't eat meat. In fact, in the bone studies quoted, at least 2 of the 22 gladiators analyzed showed elevated consumption of meat.

If you're a slave gladiator and your owner is a cheap bastard, then your dinner (like the rest of the poor people of Rome) will be mostly carbs. But if you're a well-off gladiator, you probably ate meat when you felt like it.

[1] [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141020090006.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141020090006.htm) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Roman_cuisine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Roman_cuisine)

<comment><USER14> >Garum, a fish-based condiment, was put on everything.

Aside: It's always been so interesting to me to learn about the smells, flavors, and real life of people back then. Garum is a perfect example of this. The Romans really did put the stuff on _everything_. It's not just a fish based condiment, it was a very integral part of Roman food and life. You make it by fermenting fish in salt in the Mediterranean sun for a few _months_ and then go about straining the 'pulp' until it runs clear (there is a LOT more to it than that, but thems the basics). Think something like fish sauce. Modern versions are very savory and deep in flavor; super umami sauce. Such things are, today, very foreign seeming.

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garum)

[https://www.amazon.com/Nettuno-Colatura-Anchovy-Sauce- Campan...](https://www.amazon.com/Nettuno-Colatura-Anchovy-Sauce- Campania/dp/B000CRIFGM) (a modern type of Garum)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> A large part of being a soldier was that you had your own land that you could produce enough food to survive and buy equipment go to war. War where you could capture slaves to work your land and and riches to afford more land. The idea of the state providing the means and equipment to send soldiers to war only happened in the later era where men couldn't get land because of the artistocrats owning it all and the state had to outfit them so they could go to war.

<comment><USER16> This is true for The early and middle republic Rome, but after the Marian Reforms, and especially during the Principate, Rome maintained a state sponsored standing army, with standardized arms.

Of course after the crisis and eventual fall of Rome, it went back the older way

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> > previous reviews of the scientific literature have concluded that a well- > planned and varied vegetarian diet can meet the needs of athletes, as it was > for Roman gladiators or legionnaires.

What does this even mean? "Meet the needs" is relative to a certain quality of life. Even if the gladiators or legionnaires were vegetarian (questionable even with the paper's assumptions), who knows what their quality of life was. Probably not acceptable to our standards.

</comment><comment><USER18> Vegetarian diets were easier to transport, so it could be a primarily logistical issue. An Army moves on its stomach. Much of Napoleons speed over land was due to how quickly and stably they could move food due to canning.

[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/03/01/147751097/why-...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/03/01/147751097/why- napoleon-offered-a-prize-for-inventing-canned-food)

</comment><comment><USER19> > Considering the modern diets of strength athletes, we should expect that > gladiators had a high protein diet.

Why should we expect that? Gladiators were slaves. I would expect slave owners to feed their slaves as cheaply as possible. What evidence is there that they even considered diet to be a factor in athletic performance and that they would try to maximize nutrition if they did?

</comment><comment><USER20> Meat was expensive, grain was cheap.

</comment><comment><USER21> A good resume from Nutrition Facts with a few other related papers: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2e9sLsCowaE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2e9sLsCowaE)

<comment><USER22> Ah yes Michael Greger the plant-based quack M.D

[https://i.imgur.com/Bl5Kq4w.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/Bl5Kq4w.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Dr. Greger just released a video about this, too -- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2e9sLsCowaE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2e9sLsCowaE)

</comment><comment><USER24> The reasoning I heard was that since most gladiators were unlikely to make it past the first few fights, why waste expensive food on them?

For celebrity gladiators I imagine the calculation was different.

</comment><comment><USER25> All the time, never any deviation? I understand it was expensive, so they never got a treat for doing good?

</comment><comment><USER26> > _The legionnaire 's daily ration consisted of 78% carbohydrates, mainly from > wheat or barley_

While calling that "vegetarian" is technically correct, it's not really what people understand by "vegetarian".

<comment><USER27> What, wheat and barley are not vegetarian?

<comment><USER2> GP's point was:

Maximus's diet consists of 78% cereals and grains and 22% meats. Is Maximus a vegetarian?

<comment><USER28> I don't understand, where does it say that the remaining 22% are from meats?

<comment><USER29> It also doesn't say that the remaining 22% aren't from meat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I am not surprised at all. I am from India. Most people I knew in my childhood were vegetarians. I knew a few wrestlers who practiced in the "akhadas" of Varanasi. Big guys, all "Hanuman" devotees, celibates (Brahmacharis) and vegetarians. Sushil Kumar the wrestler, Olympics medal winner, is a vegetarian: [https://www.petaindia.com/blog/sushil- kumar/](https://www.petaindia.com/blog/sushil-kumar/)

EDIT: People are getting triggered left and right. Man, this is the truth in the East. We were\are mostly vegetarians. Only recently did we start eating western food. Only recently did we see people getting terribly obese and chronically sick.

<comment><USER8> What's surprising?

You can get enough protein from milk based products and eggs.

One scoop (40g) whey contains 25-30g protein

<comment><USER30> Eggs are not vegetarian.

<comment><USER31> Eggs are not vegan, but they are vegetarian ("ovo-vegetarian")

<comment><USER30> Please read the definitions clearly. How can an animal product be vegetarian? Does it even make sense?

Ovo-vegetarianism = eggs + vegetarian food. This is certainly not eggs = vegetarian.

<comment><USER24> Different diets are practiced by all manner of different communities in the US for many different reasons. There are more possible variations than we could ever agree upon terms for.

Some people consider honey non-vegetarian because it comes from animals. Some don't eat the crackers shaped like goldfish. Some will eat dairy, but only if it's known to be processed without certain animal-derived additives. I once met someone who had a simple rule: he didn't eat anything with opaque eyelids.

(Personally, I just aim for 99.9% vegan and I don't worry if some sauce has a tiny bit of fish dust in it.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Isn't it more likely they were vegetarians not by choice but because they were essentially slaves, being fed the cheapest food possible (grains, etc)?

Though I'm sure many will use this as evidence in favor of vegetarianism... "Yeah but even the mighty gladiators were vegans!"

Anecdote storytime; I was actually born and raised into a vegetarian household, and spent the first approx 22 years of my life as a vegetarian. Then I switched to eating meat (really, just chicken and fish, maybe red meat once a year) and for me I feel healthier this way. When eating meat I can just eat less total volume of food to get the same amount of calories and nutrients compared to fueling up on a plant based diet. I love running, hiking and rock climbing, and nothing quite hits the spot like a nice protein rich chicken sandwich after a day in the mountains. YMMV, but for me, for now, I think I will continue with my consumption of animal flesh. I think to pull off the veg diet you have to carefully measure and monitor things, you can't just omit entire food groups from your diet and expect to be healthy. It's very naive but many vegan and vegetarians think this way; As long as the food has that VeganTM label, it must be good, why bother even checking the ingredients?

Tldr; ex-vegetarian since birth prefers chicken sandwiches for climber fuel

<comment><USER31> > "It's very naive but many vegan and vegetarians think this way; As long as > the food has that VeganTM label, it must be good, why bother even checking > the ingredients?"

This has not been my experience. The vegetarians and vegans I meet are typically very conscious of what they're putting into their bodies.

The evidence is that you can be a great climber (the world's greatest free- solo climber Alex Honnold is a vegetarian.) or a gladiator without meat , and the humans' insatiable meat consumption is ruining the environment even more quickly than oil.

But I wish more people who ate meat had your disposition--at least have it in moderation rather than every single kind of meat piled on a plate 3 times a day 7 days a week which is basically the norm and sadly barely hyperbolic.

<comment><USER32> You're right, I'm sure there are alot of very health conscious vegetarians who actively monitor their health. Perhaps that's actually more common. My experience has been, perhaps contrarily, that the vegan/vegetarians I've met think that by simply omitting meat they don't need to be concerned about monitoring their health. Since that was my observation and was counter intuitive I thought I'd share.

<comment><USER31> I appreciate your experience. For what it's worth I didn't downvote you, but my guess is it happened because your post comes across as mildly aggressive toward veganism even though that probably wasn't your intention.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Bullshit. Maybe they were forced to be a vegetarian when they couldn't get meat.

Also, it's not like they had modern vegetarian protein powders and supplements which are most likely being used in their assessment of the modern vegetarian athlete.

And it's super flawed reasoning to assume that because they have markers of eating plant-based food, they therefore only ate plant-based food.

This just seems like vegetarian propaganda masquerading as science.

<comment><USER34> It's not even new information -- it has been known by historians for decades that most non-elite Romans had no ability to regularly consume meat and they existed on a heavy carbohydrate diet supplemented by seafood when they could get it.

It's one of the things remarked on by contemporary Romans about their Germanic and Celtic foes -- that they ate so much meat, that they used 'disgusting' animal fats (lard and butter) instead of olive oils in their cooking. And that they were much taller. Likely because of higher meat and dairy consumption over several generations.

The Roman agricultural economy could not support high meat consumption.</comment></comment>


What's a Bitcoin Look Like? The Story Behind This Popular Photograph - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-30/what-s-a-bitcoin-look-like-popular-photograph-has-story.html

<comment><USER3> These days I'd rather see journalists use stock photos of mining hardware. I assume that didn't exist at the time the photo dates back to.

<comment><USER4> I think somebody should made a coin with Mark Karpeles' face on it - <USER2> represent and sell better.

<comment><USER5> There's always this: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coinye](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coinye)</comment></comment></comment>


Union Square Ventures announces The Opportunity Fund - <AUTHOR> http://www.usv.com/2011/01/the-opportunity-fund.php

<comment><USER2> I'm respecting Fred Wilson more and more with each article I read from him. But I think this article really has some deep thoughts that are expressed in clear ways.

1\. Not "web apps" but "Internet services". It's a bigger world than just websites or backend services. iOS, Android, Desktop native, Web App, cloud, etc. Developers need to think broader in not just what website or app do I want to make but what kind of Internet service do I want to provide.

2\. The irresistible economics of large networks. In other words, large networks make sense economically. They will find a way to be profitable. And they will transform the world, relationships, business, culture, worldview. Large networks might just be the most transformative force in today's world.

3\. User experience rules. It's not about how techy or complex your project is, but rather what's the experience of the user. How does it add value to them? And do they LOVE it? This is what differentiates various Internet services and allows them to gain traction until they can fully utilize network effects to make their site better than anything else out there.

4\. Launching new large networks is more challenging. People are already on FB, Twitter, Tumblr, etc... and to create new large networks can be difficult because people already have their loyalities, and the current large networks are just getting better and better. Those that can start large new networks are doing it in a way that's a different approach than what's out there.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure it's necessarily harder now to launch a new network. Obviously it's going to be harder to launch something similar to what's already out there, but I suspect that truly novel services are actually easier to spread the word about because the velocity of information is so much higher. Do something really cool, and you'll be splashed across the Twtterverse in a matter of hours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if this kind of "extra fund" will become commonplace for successful micro-vc / super-angels. If you put out 100 $500k investments, and one turns out to be twitter, you are going to want the capital to keep a pro-rata share and follow on.

Raising money for that should be easy, especially if you restrict the fund to existing investments and only charge fees on invested capital.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Defensibility is more about network effects than patents." Interesting point.

</comment><comment><USER6> Its interesting because FW has been cautious about a bubble developing within the startup investing. Maybe he was referring to non-network-effect companies.

</comment><comment><USER7> Venture capital firms are definitely taking note of the seed stage opportunities. From what little I know about the VC business, I believe the problem isn't that the money doesn't scale to make lots of small investments. The problem is that people's time doesn't scale. Fred Wilson can't keep up with all his emails, and adding more people to the firm isn't going to solve the problem. On the other hand, although having a public "VC" firm like a public stock market would solve this problem in a great way ("invest in the startups you're interested in"), the SEC enforces laws to prevent willy-nilly selling shares to the public (blue sky laws an all that). Makes sense.

So that's why we have sites like KickStarter and I think you will see a lot more of that kind of thing going on to fund entrepreneurs in the next 5-10 years. Which is a good thing, IMHO.

I have a few ideas along these lines, but no money to execute them at the moment. They are fairly simple but have a lot of moving parts, involving lawyers, settings things up, etc. If anyone is curious as to my ideas about improving seed funding for everyone, contact me at my email address. <http://magarshak.com/contact> . Especially if you work at a VC firm and want to spin something off like this :)</comment>


Show HN: Picnic.css, a lightweight Bootstrap alternative - <AUTHOR> http://picnicss.com/ I've tried to make it as light as possible. It's only tested with Firefox and Chrome, however I intend to test it in IE down to 9. What would you change? What would you add? Any feedback or pull request is greatly welcome! MIT Licensed <comment><USER4> First of all, I want to say that I like the vibrant colors, small size, and checkable buttons. Smaller (and JS-less) CSS frameworks is something that I've been crusading for for years now.

Secondly, I'm the creator of Min ([http://minfwk.com](http://minfwk.com)), a fellow small CSS framework. Min is only 995 bytes - 5 times smaller. It also is more widely used, has feature parity with Bootstrap through the Min Bootstrap plugin, supports IE5.5+, is valid CSS, and doesn't have browser bugs. There's also an easy way to migrate from Bootstrap to Min (the Bootstrap->Min converter.)

Why would someone use Picnic.css rather than Min? I'd like to see the advantages of Picnic.css straight from the creator, since it seems you're answering questions in this thread. It seems one of the advantages you're touting is the "invasive"ness, which is a cool approach (I don't see Min taking that approach for various reasons but I think it can be a better choice for many use cases.) Another seems to be the grid naming system. What other things would make someone prefer Picnic.css for their project?

<comment><USER5> This is extremely tacky. Of course you meant to put the framework down - <USER2> first statement shows you think this is a competition, and you don't want to "lose"

Your edit is just to try and convince others and yourself that you weren't being a complete tool. (You were).

It seems you had no other intention in your comment than to belittle the authors work and puff yourself up. If you actually thought you could learn something from the author you would have treated them with some degree of respect.

<comment><USER6> Oh go soak your head. Commenter points out what they likes about OP's tool, describes their own, and asks for a sales pitch from OP about why someone should use their (OP's) tool. There's nothing wrong with any of this-- why do you think OP posted their framework here if not to receive feedback & have an opportunity to sell their tool?

People complaining that bringing up an alternate CSS framework for compare/contrast in a thread on a new CSS framework need to chill.

<comment><USER5> Their edited-edited post is much more approachable. Bringing up alternatives is great, that's why I generally bookmark threads like this. Passive aggressive rhetorical questions are not nearly as conducive to productive conversation. I commend them for changing the tone of their post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Lots of accessibility issues here.

* Keyboard accessibility is completely busted (other comments have pointed this out).

* Color contrast doesn't meet WCAG 2.0 AA (Bootstrap is bad here too).

* The  should have aria-role="button", tabindex="0" and a bit of JavaScript to trigger a click event when the space or enter keys are pressed while it has focus. This is for keyboard _and_ screen reader accessibility.

* The checkboxes and radio buttons need similar ARIA, tabindex and keydown tricks (because the inputs themselves are hidden [stupidly, in my opinion]). Again, this is for both keyboard and screen reader users.

Bootstrap commits a lot of the same mistakes with their button.js component (although it looks like it's improving). See this post [0] for details (disclaimer: I wrote it).

I wouldn't use this if I were you.

[0] [https://danielnixon.org/improving-bootstraps-woeful- accessib...](https://danielnixon.org/improving-bootstraps-woeful- accessibility/)

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. I opened the issue, this definitely needs fixing.

2\. Can you share a tool (preferably online) where we can see the color contrast problem, please? How did you check that they didn't meet WCAG 2.0 AA (so I can check it and fix it).

3\. Not really CSS problem

4\. Not a CSS problem. Anyway, I think that something can be done with CSS though.

This is a _pure_ CSS tool, so the html and javascript problems should be addressed by the people using the tool, not by the css itself.

So please, don't use it, or help me improve it until it can be used. If you see any other problem, don't hesitate to comment, open an issue in Github ( [https://github.com/picnicss/picnic](https://github.com/picnicss/picnic) ) or just send a small push request fixing a problem at a time (I'm trying to address every problem by myself, which is daunting).

<comment><USER7> For contrast, maybe check out either HTML_CodeSniffer [0] or Vision Australia's Colour Contrast Analyser [1]. Also this Bootstrap issue [2], which references a couple more.

The problem with being pure CSS is that you're hiding inputs and styling their labels to appear (visually) as their replacements (against the labels' semantics).

If you're going to hide the inputs (in the three cases of labels with class "button", "radio" and "checkbox") and style labels against their semantics, you need to use JavaScript to fix the accessibility issues this introduces. I don't think there's a non-JavaScript, non-ARIA solution to the accessibility issues (other than not hiding the inputs in the first place).

So I think there are three options:

1\. Hide inputs, style labels (status quo) and use JavaScript, ARIA, tabindex, etc to fix accessibility issues.

2\. Don't hide inputs, remain pure CSS, avoid accessibility issues in the first place.

3\. Ignore accessibility issues.

[0] [https://squizlabs.github.io/HTML_CodeSniffer/](https://squizlabs.github.io/HTML_CodeSniffer/)

[1] [http://www.visionaustralia.org/digital-access- cca](http://www.visionaustralia.org/digital-access-cca)

[2] [https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/issues/3572](https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/issues/3572)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In my opinion, the only great thing about Bootstrap is the grid system and form styling, the rest is just useless cruft. As a front-end developer, I see the value in Bootstrap and I have used it before, but when installing it as a Bower component, it makes it harder to filter out the crap you don't need like button styling, header styling and other stuff Bootstrap includes that just bloats your CSS. To me, I find Bootstrap TOO opinionated, I spend a lot of my time overriding styles than I do setting them. In the real world unless it is your own project, you are being given designs and fitting the style of a PSD file into Bootstrap can be more trouble than it is worth.

These days I actually use Foundation by Zurb which I think is arguably one of the best front-end CSS libraries out there, it allows greater control and offers some awesome Javascript components. Not only that, it has a great grid system like Bootstrap, but it is by far, the least opinionated and most powerful front-end library out there.

Cudos for trimming the fat and offering an alternative for those who use Bootstrap. My only nitpick is those bevelled buttons don't look very nice and the classes for the grid system using fractions might be a little confusion for some who are bad at maths and fractions (like me). I prefer having the option of putting the number in the class like in Bootstrap: col-md-6 as opposed to using a class called "half"

<comment><USER9> The best thing about Bootstrap is that it's ubiquitous -- every frontender has heard of it and can easily jump on a project that uses it -- and that there are a lot of integrations with frameworks, like angular-bootstrap or react- bootstrap, that don't tie you to using the stock jQuery plugins.

This framework doesn't have anything that relies on JS magic, like button dropdowns, collapsing panes, etc, which are useful in real-world apps. I certainly wouldn't want to reimplement my own versions for every project.

Bootstrap's cruft is a non-issue if you use the customizer [0], or, better yet, selectively import the components using LESS or SCSS [1].

[0] [http://getbootstrap.com/customize/](http://getbootstrap.com/customize/)

[1] [https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/blob/master/less/bootstrap...](https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/blob/master/less/bootstrap.less)

<comment><USER8> The JS components are a non-issue, I agree. However, the one problem with customising Bootstrap is if you're using a front-end dependency manager like Bower, as far as I am aware, you cannot easily customise the dependencies in Bootstrap if using Bower or Component. Sure, I could use a custom generated and downloaded version of the compiled CSS files, but then I loose the ability to change colours, fonts and whatnot using variables or the internal helper functions...

<comment><USER9> Not at all. If you use LESS/SASS, you can use your own variables and mixin overrides stored in a file outside bower_components. e.g. [https://github.com/apigee/ui- framework/blob/master/less/core...](https://github.com/apigee/ui- framework/blob/master/less/core/bootstrap.less)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've tried to keep it as tiny as possible with just under 3kb when gzipped. What would you change? What would you add? Any feedback or pull request is greatly welcome! MIT Licensed

<comment><USER10> Here is the thing I would like and maybe I could fork your and just try it and see how it looks. I really like attribute based properties for grid, I think this is great idea. Check it here. I think this could make your framework different from me-too frameworks. I think you could improve on it quite a bit, add optional modules for modal for example, maybe some other elements.

[http://glenmaddern.com/articles/introducing-am- css](http://glenmaddern.com/articles/introducing-am-css)

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't really like the style. However, I take a note about it, thank you for the suggestion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Honestly for most "real" projects, I just use the Bootstrap LESS source files for the normalizer, grid etc. and just compile my own UI components. I believe that for any app to be unique, it has to have its own visual style and when you use the whole of Bootstrap (or just about any other framework) you just can't differentiate yourself. Don't get me wrong, I love these frameworks. I just think they're good for quick and dirty prototypes / open source hacks.

<comment><USER12> I am still waiting for a customer to tell me they don't like my application because it uses a common UI framework. Not holding my breath. Tech people care about this, but only barely and only very few.

A fresh and engaging UI with groundbreaking ideas and techniques could possibly win you lots of fans but for the vast majority of applications (especially lob or ent) this does not make sense.

<comment><USER13> Yes, I think web developers are inundated with bootstrap sites but if I am making a site for non-tech people, the odds of them having any clue what bootstrap is, let alone being able to identify its use is very unlikely. At least, that is my calculation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Chrome Version 37.0.2062.120 + Mac OS Mavericks

Weird border: [http://i.imgur.com/mLxx8gy.png](http://i.imgur.com/mLxx8gy.png)

Not centered: [http://i.imgur.com/edMfAMC.png](http://i.imgur.com/edMfAMC.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> Well I knew the border hack for the <select> would pop up at some point for some reason. I'll fix it ASAP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I tried using Bootstrap and other CSS frameworks and (as mentioned in the comments) I felt like I was fighting the frameworks to get it to do what I wanted to do.

The problem with CSS frameworks is that they are invasive when it comes to writing semantic HTML. As someone who is working on developing semantic HTML and improving the skill, its annoying when you use a CSS framework which it encourages you to perform inline styling.

Layout should be _separated_ from content.

Bootstrap and others is are great for making something quick and dirty. Semantic UI[1] is onto something decent but the issue of inline styling irritates me. Its good that Picnic is taking an approach to use better naming conventions for classes. I think this is a preference thing but I find writing _button-one_ better than writing _btn-1_. I think its readable, can be understood quickly , easy to pick up if you have been away from development for a while, looks maintainable even for novice developers.

Shorthand has never been my thing, it just adds more complexity and nuisance by wasting time digging into someones documentation to understand whats going on. I would rather spend an extra two seconds writing out a full name rather than using shorthand knowing that its going to make my life easier in the future.

Great work, I'll definitely play with this when I get time.

1\. [http://semantic-ui.com/](http://semantic-ui.com/)

<comment><USER16> I think you'd like the bourbon framework, which is basically a way to structure your css and doesn't get in your way. See their grid framework: [http://neat.bourbon.io/](http://neat.bourbon.io/) and their default style package akin to bootstrap: [http://refills.bourbon.io/](http://refills.bourbon.io/)

<comment><USER17> I also recommend [http://purecss.io/](http://purecss.io/) from Yahoo. I agree that bootstrap is quite heavy and there's a learning curve. I liked purecss because it is simple and does what you set out to do.

<comment><USER15> Cool. I will have a look at the frameworks suggested. Thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I tried this kind of selectors for styling and I don't like it. I can explain why with a question :

What if you want a button that looks like a like and a link that looks like a button. In your case you will have to overwrite "button" selector, which is with very high specificiy and to override the main selector styles.

        button.link { color: white; border: 0; background: none... }

and then copy the relevant for only a link styles to your link selector ( a ).

This works good for small code base, but once you go to several pages and need specific links it starts to make a lot of problems.

I stopped using this way of styling buttons not so long ago and I switched it to :

        <button class='button'></button>
        <button class='button button-primary'></button>
        <button class='button button-danger'></button>

And also for links

        Link

And then I can easily switch

        <button class='link link-primary'></button>

without touching my code.

Same applies for input[type='...'] rules. I just add class name.

<comment><AUTHOR> While it's true that sometimes you want a link to act as a button ( Looks like button ), I cannot think of the case when you want a button to look like a link.

May I ask, in what situation did you encounter this? I still think this is way too specific (I have never had to do something like that). Picnic lets buttons be buttons, and links be links OR buttons, just buttons cannot be links.

I think in this way you can achieve less bloated classes and better readability. I value that higher than allowing buttons to be links. That's just my preference. Thank you for the insight though, it's a clear and good explanation of Picnic limits.

<comment><USER19> I second drinchev's comment. You have no way of knowing what all potential contexts people are going to want to use buttons for. Applying styling to the bare element means frequently resetting those styles. It's always better to extend than to reset. I use button elements for any control that is handled via JavaScript. Only a minority of buttons I use are actually for form submission.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The bit with the checkbox then 2 radios is a bit confusing (chrome/android/nexus 5) - at the start there's no check in the checkbox, I tap and it checks, I tap to uncheck and it changes to a light grey check. That gives the impression this checkbox has 3 States and is really confusing. Worse, when I then tap, say a radio button, it goes back to unchecked. My guess is this is just a focus issue but it's definitely confusing as it is.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have no idea of why this is happening, I will investigate further

<comment><USER20> I'm reasonably sure this is because of the light grey check hover effect you have. I can reproduce on Nexus 7/Chrome in exactly the same way. I get the same effect on my laptop by leaving the cursor over the checkbox after unchecking - although then it's obvious because I've already seen the hover state.

My guess is mobile Chrome is using the hover effect to denote selected - <USER3> I guess kinda makes sense. I'd probably just disable that hover style altogether to be honest, Bootstrap doesn't use one and I think that's better.

<comment><AUTHOR> Okay, it looks perfectly fine without it. I thought it might be a nice touch, but didn't see the bug until now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Another lightweight Bootstrap alternative from Yahoo, 4.4KB: [http://purecss.io](http://purecss.io)

<comment><USER22> I'm a big fan of Min: [http://minfwk.com/](http://minfwk.com/)

995 bytes!

<comment><USER4> Thanks! I'm the creator of Min. Are there any suggestions or improvements you have?

<comment><USER23> My first impression of min is that it looks nice. Really, for it's goals, it's pretty tight.

As a branding thing, I'd change that URL. I get that it's short but minfwk.com doesn't really look like "Min Framework" to me. It just looks like a bunch of letters. A domain like mincss.com, getmin.com, minframework.com or something more legible would be better.

<comment><USER4> > My first impression of min is that it looks nice. Really, for it's goals, > it's pretty tight.

Thanks! You have no idea how good that feels.

> As a branding thing, I'd change that URL. I have had minframework.com for a > while and still do, but it seems too long (Right now it redirects to > minfwk.com) but I just got mincss.com and I prefer it quite a bit. I'll > update Github accordingly. Thanks for the suggestion!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Just a comment about the buttons: It feels weird that they kinda "pre-press" themselves when hovering. I guess ergonomically speaking, a button shouldn't move down while it's not pressed. On the other hand, maybe a glow or a subtle coloring could do the trick?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats right and also fix a .1em bug that is bothering me when hover. So glow whiter when hover and move when pressed. They are now the way they are because it was based on [http://tympanus.net/Development/CreativeButtons/](http://tympanus.net/Development/CreativeButtons/) , but I will also improve it (I just opened the issue in Github).

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I really like this, and am considering incorporating it in quite a few sites at this particular moment; so far so good implementation-wise.

A _huge_ plus that makes up for the lack of pre-IE9 Internet Explorer support is the fact that this seems to fail gracefully; since it's "invasive", it leaves behind a relatively-normal-looking site should it not load (tested on lynx and Firefox). This makes me less nervous about deploying it on sites where the target demographic is more likely to use old IE versions (like my own hometown, unfortunately...).

A couple oddities:

* It would be really nice if the hamburger-mode menu pulled its background colors from the non-hamburger-mode menu and/or navbar; that was a bit of a hiccup when trying to change the navigation colors.

* I still can't figure out how to change the color of the hamburger icon. Where is that defined so I can override it and match the rest of a page's text? With a dark navbar background, it's kind of hard to see.

* The thresholds for hamburger v. non-hamburger seem too low; while my testing in Firefox resulted in proper responsiveness to the window width, the page loads as if it's a desktop site on my phone (HTC One M8, any browser), probably because of the high (1080x1920) screen resolution. I ended up manually editing picnic.css in order to adjust the thresholds accordingly (to 1100px for phones and 1200px for whatever's supposed to be the next one; the narrowest desktop monitor width in somewhat-common use nowadays is 1280, so I don't expect there to be very many issues caused by this...).

* Weirdness with font sizes on actual phones (as opposed to resized desktop windows) when font-size is set to 1em (probably a mobile browser quirk, not necessarily something wrong with Picnic); I added a max-width conditional to set these bigger on phone widths (while leaving them at 1em for desktops/laptops, where the screens are bigger and can handle the smaller text).

All in all, not bad. It's already likely going to see use in a couple of my own sites. For someone like me who cringes at the thought of trying to wrangle Bootstrap into doing something useful, this is a breath of fresh air.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the interest. I am using it for rapid prototyping and for websites where personalization is not top priority.

* I know... I don't think that's achievable with the structure I'm using though

* In line 690, where it says `border-color: #333;` within `.burgermenu:before,.burgermenu:after{}`. This is due to lack of Android support for the font.

* Did you remember to set the viewport meta tag? [http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/quick-tip-dont-forget...](http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/quick-tip-dont-forget-the-viewport-meta-tag--webdesign-5972)

* Is it related to the last point? Can you share an screenshot, please?

<comment><USER25> Yeah, forgot the viewport thing. Thanks for that.

As for the burgermenu, I'll take a look at that; thanks for the pointer. I'm currently playing with this alongside Pure (which I'm also interested in for many of the same reasons - namely, the lack of JavaScript, the small footprint, and not being some giant clusterfsck like Bootstrap and Groundwork tend to be), and one advantage of Picnic in comparison to that is that the menu actually shrinks down to a burgermenu without the need for Javascript (as far as I can tell; with Pure, that doesn't seem to be the case).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> CSS/HTML frameworks like these are very well suited for web interfaces running on embedded microcontrollers, where storage comes at premium and design requirements are moderate.

Looking forward to actually trying this in near future!

</comment><comment><USER27> One thing I noticed missing (or that you should consider) is keyboard accessibility. If I tab through the page, I quickly get lost where I'm at (until I focus on an text input element).

</comment><comment><USER28> Buttons in top nav have incorrect line-height - [https://www.dropbox.com/s/xqqg1hpovghk827/Screenshot%202014-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/xqqg1hpovghk827/Screenshot%202014-09-14%2020.22.01.png?dl=0)

I added ``line-height: 1.4em;`` in dev tools and now they look ok - [https://www.dropbox.com/s/ksxu15t9rrofxti/Screenshot%202014-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/ksxu15t9rrofxti/Screenshot%202014-09-14%2020.22.45.png?dl=0)

<comment><AUTHOR> Should be fixed now, right? What browser was it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Very nice. Only one thing really bothered me: it's really hard to tell when the radio buttons are selected. I much prefer a full circle when selected

<comment><USER30> They look like nipples.

<comment><AUTHOR> That was totally not the point (;

(will fix ASAP)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Couldn't you use Bootstrap's "customize" feature and just downloads the components found here? Doubt it would be much larger.

</comment><comment><USER32> An even lighter-weight alternative: forgetting about CSS "frameworks" altogether. Aside from propping up prototypes really quickly (an exercise made trivial with these help of these little style collections) I just don't understand why anyone would want them in a real app. I've spent hours upon hours fighting the likes of Bootstrap and its copycats. And to what end?

<comment><USER33> OK, and where do I start? How do I make a pretty blue border around a text input to subtly indicate focus? What's the best gradient / padding to use in such circumstances? What fade in time will looks good? There are so many questions I could ask just about the text input highlighting.

As a back end developer who needs to do bits and pieces of front end stuff, I can see this taking me months (at least) to learn JavaScript CSS, and design to make something as anywhere close to bootstrap. Or I could just use what they have done (and thousands have tested) and save myself a whole lot of effort. And if you have other developers joining the team, at least they will be familiar with whatever framework you are using, rather than some in house crap that someone wrote ages ago, and has now left the company.

I have not looked at the source code for Bootstrap, but if it was crap I assume there would be a ton of articles ranting about like there are for PHP.

So (with Bootstrap at least) I am getting pre-written, tested, understood code, documented code, probably of at least "reasonable" quality, with a community online to help with problems. Does you own code have that? I certainly don't have time to write that stuff myself .

The more experienced I get as a developer, the less code I try to write. People with the "code everything yourself" attitude remind me of when I was fresh out of university, and didn't realise how incompetent I was at the time.

<comment><USER32> If you're designing sites yourself, I completely agree with you. I haven't much of an eye for design myself and always rely on foundational CSS to take care of these kinds of decisions when I build pet projects; however, I've always worked on teams that have designers who hand me high-fidelity mocks (or at least high-level style guides) that answer these questions. The implementation itself is simple enough once you've worked with CSS long enough.

<comment><USER33> I think you have answered your own question there then:

simple enough _once you 've worked with CSS long enough_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I have been using Cardinal CSS [1], a mobile first framework on my site[2]. Minified version is only 15kb. It also has support for LESS.

[1]: [http://cardinalcss.com/](http://cardinalcss.com/) [2]: [http://www.jjude.biz](http://www.jjude.biz)

</comment><comment><USER35> Semantic UI is also a great alternative. [http://semantic- ui.com/](http://semantic-ui.com/)

But again, in a professional setting I would prefer Bootstrap any day. It looks well done, it's easy to customize, and it has a lot of pre-built components.

<comment><AUTHOR> I really like it! It's more with the Picnic philosophy of naming classes.

The only problem with bootstrap is the weight, it's way too heavy for most part of the world's mobile internet.

<comment><USER36> Weird, I have the whole Bootstrap kitchen sink on one site and the total CSS weight (including Bootstrap and my own styles) is a hair over 24k. If I actually took the time to optimize out the stuff I don't need, I could probably get it down even further - but I'd have to be in a serious yak- shaving mood.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Nice work; I dig the not-having-to-do-anything approach.

One thing -- hovering the demo button seems to affect elements underneath: [http://goo.gl/9vD0D2](http://goo.gl/9vD0D2)

<comment><AUTHOR> I hope it's fixed now, I forgot to re-test that bit after a .1em change I did

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> There's a problem with the options on the dropdown [select] box so that the bottom border is missing when the dropdown is active. FF31.0 Kubuntu; didn't test/investigate further.

</comment><comment><USER39> Overall, this speaks more to an engineer's obsession with size reduction than true design principles.

The animated buttons are a distraction, especially.

</comment><comment><USER40> Also, what about a Less/Sass version so the HTML can be even cleaner by using just mixins in the Less/Sass to build the grid.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't have experience with CSS preprocessors, it's just after Laravel in the list of things I want to learn. Sorry about that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm not very okay with the checkbox and radio button styling. I don't think you actually would need to touch those at all...

<comment><AUTHOR> They look too out of place in some browsers while in others they look okay. So I tried to make them the same but apparently fail horribly. Now I'll try to fix it within 24hours or revert to default.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> How about static responsive breakpoints for the grid, instead of being 100% fluid? And with that, a maximum width?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not completely sure of what you mean with _static responsive breakpoints_ (I'm not English native), could you clarify please?

<comment><USER42> I believe (s)he means absolute pixel breakpoints instead of percentages

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> neat! i use bootstrap as a "go to" CSS for new web apps i develop, this is a welcome alternative. thanks!

i'm not a web dev (i'm a backend guy), i need to make some front end PoCs sometime, so i don't stay up on CSS packages and kits.

</comment><comment><USER44> > Except for the grids and a bit of the nav

How would this be fixed if you want it completely semantic?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have been looking for a fix and the current grid system is the best I could do. Instead of `pure-u-1-3` from Pure or `col-md-4` from Bootstrap I went for a _clearer_ naming from my point of view: `third` to mean a third. There's no inherent grid system in html since grids are a presentation structure. To make it semantic you should use your own elements/classes and then give them the style, plus the responsive bit.

About the nav, you could make it completely semantic by using some JS or not making it responsive, however I thought the benefits of having a responsive  would compensate for those 2 extra lines of code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Interesting framework, might be useful for mobile or email templates.

</comment><comment><USER46> I like www.minfwk.com

But it's a little more extreme.

<comment><USER4> Woo! Nice to see Min mentioned - I'm the creator of Min. Any suggestions or improvements you'd like?

<comment><USER46> Seems like the Bootstrap-plugin link is dead [https://owenversteeg.com/min- bootstrap-plugin](https://owenversteeg.com/min-bootstrap-plugin)

<comment><USER4> Works fine for me, weird.

[edit] nvm, it just doesn't work over HTTPS. [http://owenversteeg.com/min- bootstrap-plugin](http://owenversteeg.com/min-bootstrap-plugin) works. I'll have to look at setting up https for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Those colors are way too bold.

</comment><comment><USER48> Button depressed states on hover?!

Your death will be the first</comment>


Spotify bitrategate: 320kbps premium quality not there yet - <AUTHOR> http://www.spotifyclassical.com/2011/07/spotify-bitrategate-story-so-far.html

<comment><USER2> Solution: Everytime a track is requested by a premium member, if it does not exist in 320 then they send FLAC and the client converts it on the fly while playing it and sends it back to Spotify. Do this 3x for every track and verify that the md5 is the same on all three.

Then, the most popular songs will be available in 320, and the ones that aren't would never have been accessed in the first place.

<comment><USER3> This solves the CPU issue but I reckon bandwidth is the real issue. This solution actually increases bandwidth usage and there would need to be a lot more checks than just 3 md5's to prevent abuse.

<comment><USER4> Maybe, but this could easily be refined, e.g. by using fingerprinting. Perhaps even the fingerprint of the Flac data (assuming that fingerprinting is much cheaper than lossy compression).

However, it would be odd if CPU power is the real bottleneck here. I read the article, but can we actually be sure that licensing is not at fault? Or simply, the lack of proper management?

Given how much more revenue iTunes sales would give for the average Premium user, it could be possible that they (RIAA and others) want to keep the incentive to buy iTunes tracks (or the physical album). Not that Spotify would ever admit this, since it would effectively change their status to 'music preview/demo/shareware' provider.

The quality plus the 'disappearing tracks' issues, make me think that it is all about preserving buying incentive. At least, that's what it did for me.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for all the comments.

Personally I don't think licensing is the problem. Why would the labels let Spotify stream the new Paul Oakenfold and Beyonce album as exclusive pre- releases and, at the same time, not allow them to offer HQ streaming for those albums? What's the point? To force the audiophile users to buy 320 kbps mp3s or CDs? Many of the premium users don't even know it's not 320 kbps.

<comment><USER4> _Personally I don't think licensing is the problem. Why would the labels let Spotify stream the new Paul Oakenfold and Beyonce album as exclusive pre- releases and, at the same time, not allow them to offer HQ streaming for those albums? What's the point?_

The very same reason they pay some television and radio stations to broadcast particular material: to get people to buy the albums.

It's a combination of things that make Spotify subpar for many music enthusiasts. The lack of availability of lossless streams, incompleteness of the catalog in 320kbps, missing tracks on many albums, uncertainty about future accessibility of music, etc.

When Spotify was introduced in The Netherlands, I absolutely loved it, and was convinced that I'd never need to spend much more on music than 10 Euros per month (imagine what a save this is when you buy at least 4 albums per month). However, given the reasons listed above, I am now mostly using Spotify for music discovery, and still buy albums. It only helped me to make more 'accurate' purchases. As a side effect, I ended my Premium subscription, because the 2.5 hours/week, 5 plays per track is plenty enough for evaluation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In controlled listening tests most people have trouble distinguishing mp3 at 128-160 VBR kbits from the uncompressed original. 320 kbits is just a waste of bandwidth but people just assume more is better.

<comment><USER7> That depends on what you're listening to. For all my progressive/power metal, 128 just sounds terrible and _empty_. I'm not very well versed in the terminology, so I don't know how better to describe it. On the contrary, 320 sounds _full_.

My two cents.

<comment><USER6> People make a lot of those kinds of qualitative statements about sound quality, but when they actually do a rigorous A/B test they usually can't tell the difference.

I've done quite a bit of A/B testing on metal at ~128 kbits and it's _very_ difficult to spot differences on most tracks. Modern lossy audio encoders are very, very good.

<comment><USER8> Using decent in-ear headphones (I like the Etymotic HF2), listening to Justice, I can definitely without a doubt tell the difference between 128 kbit and +256 kbit. Or more specifically, 128 kbit and lower for specific music makes me feel nauseous.

I'm guessing this type of music simply doesn't compress as well as say... Red Hot Chili Peppers.

I'm not performing a rigorous A/B test, and I can believe that I would fail said A/B test given other conditions (other speakers, other music, etc). I would love for this to be true for all conditions and save all that storage space. Unfortunately, in my personal real-life conditions, better quality does make for a better listening experience.

<comment><USER9> Are you doing the encoding and performing A/B tests yourself? There are all kinds of things that can hurt audio fidelity a lot worse than bitrate. Some MP3's are poorly encoded by some crappy shareware application. Some are transcoded from an already-lossy source. Some productions will compress better than others (supposedly, some producers actually mix and master with inevitable compression in mind).

<comment><USER8> My original source was pirated music at 128kbits. Since then, I bought it and have the 320kbit version which immediately sounded incredibly better. Occasionally I'll hear it on 128kibts or 192kbits on Pandora and such, and the difference is very noticeable to me.

My data is purely anecdotal but I feel strongly about it and would be willing to put money where my mouth is if someone wants to call me on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> robert-boehnke From Spotify's perspective, there is a low incentive to offer unpopular songs as 320kbps streams.

If there is only a small number of peers in the network that have the high Bitrate stream (paying users with HQ enabled on desktop clients and with interest in unpopular song X), they benefits of the peer to peer networking are less likely to pay off.

However, that does not explain why they don't offer HQ for some of their more prestigious releases, though I wouldn't be surprised if the labels hand them 'shitty' 192kbps mp3s every now and then.

Interesting read about some of their p2p architecture (PDF): [http://www.csc.kth.se/~gkreitz/spotify-p2p10/spotify-p2p10.p...](http://www.csc.kth.se/~gkreitz/spotify-p2p10/spotify-p2p10.pdf)

EDIT:

After looking at the spreadsheet, I'd wager that there is a correlation between lower popularity of tracks and being 160 kbps only. The only track out of the last 40 is Michael Jackson's This is It, and a quick look up in the Spotify client gives most of them a very low 'popularity' measure.

I mean, really? <http://open.spotify.com/track/7kBDTeWty0z1MXjcH9twph>

</comment><comment><USER10> Spotify uses Vorbis for streaming and Vorbis' 320kbit is not the same as MP3's 320kbit.

In fact, MP3 has quality problems (sample/frequency resolution limit per block) that cannot be fixed at any bitrate. Moreover, re-encoding one lossless format to another ( _edit: not what article suggests_ ) would further degrade quality. You'd get desired bandwidth, but not the quality.

It's a shame that bandwidth became synonymous with quality and MP3's upper limit is taken as "highest quality". 320kbit (and lossless!) WAVE sounds like a phone line! OTOH it's quite possible that Vorbis at lower bitrate has higher quality than MP3's maximum.

<comment><USER11> I believe you are referring to lossy formats, as re-encoding one lossless format to another will not degrade quality. Re-encoding the lossless format to 320kbit Vorbis is what he's requesting which will ensure minimum quality degradation while still reducing the file size.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the ever-ongoing war between audiophiles and "nobody can tell 128/192/256/whatever kbps lossy files from CD" supporters is irreverent here. I am not suggesting Spotify to give us a better quality that maybe doesn't mean too much for some other users, I am asking them why they didn't deliver the goods they promised more than two years ago.

<comment><USER12> You probably mean "irrelevant".

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not to start the "320kbs is better" discussion but with my Unlimited account I only heard one or two albums which sounds very compressed (spotify:album:07hc4SjPjogLqwBc7dUCiD for example: Alan Parsons). Most of the time the quality is just very good. I think the standard 160kbs is great imho.

<comment><USER14> That really depends on what you're listening to the music on.

If you want to use Spotify at home and are listening on a nice stereo, then compression artifacts are very obvious in almost everything on Spotify.

For that reason, if I'm not listening to local music I tend to listen to KEXP's uncompressed stream. It's a mere 1.4Mbps.

Which then hits on why Spotify are most likely not serving 320. "It's the bandwidth, stupid".

It's all about the bandwidth. How few people are going to hear the difference, and how much would it cost to implement? The bandwidth costs are definitely non-trivial for their subscriber base, so implementing 320 is going to hit their costs hard.

For the article linked, notice the blog title, Spotify Classical.

Classical music really does show up artifacts in compression like Hip Hop, Pop and Rock (and Prog Rock) simply doesn't. The strings and low bass both exist in the upper and lower audio ranges precisely where compression is most aggressive and therefore noticeable. This isn't going to affect greatly the Beyonces of this world, but it affects some delicate string recital.

To be honest, if I were Spotify, I'd probably just rip the classical in 320 as that is a specialist crowd who probably can hear the difference and would kick up a stink. And then keep the vast majority in 160 as the vast majority aren't going to notice and wouldn't kick up a stink. If I wanted to be more intelligent, I'd write something to try and detect artifacts, and if a 160 file exhibited above a certain threshold, then I'd make that a contender to be at 320... thus trying to find a sweet spot between quality and bandwidth costs.

<comment><USER13> To give a little context: I listen to everything from classical music to noise and use good equipment.

You make it sound like classical music is the only kind of music where quality is important. This is not true. Quality is also important in modern music. Listen to Amon Tobin or Aphex Twin for example.

Besides Ogg is not the same as MP3. It's not a "kill all low and high" format. Listening test showed that Ogg is fine for strings. Short attack times are the problem areas when using a lower bitrate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Give us the snakeoil you advertised no matter if it is actually 'better'"

</comment><comment><USER16> It's not like high bit rate is the only feature of Spotify Premium. It's definitely a good feature but I ordered premium without even knowing about the high bit rate option.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm impressed by Spotify. 20 hours of the same sort of unlimited free music as what.cd and waffles.fm. 50 million Spotify users in the first year seems like a possibly not that unrealistic prediction for them to make. Perhaps Spotify motivates the record companies to launch and relentlessly promote their own Hulu for music. I don't think the record companies can react that quickly though. Maybe a few Swedish entrepreneurs just took quietly over (or become the prime influencers of) the US record industry.

@Daniel Ek: I'll sign up for the $9.95/month plan when you have 95% of your music available at ~192 kb/s OGG. I just want the slightly more bandwidth that ensures I can't tell it apart from CD and it isn't much more bandwidth.

Actually, what I really want is one of those menus where you got to choose your own encoding like allofmp3.com had.

Edit: Actually, these ads are really annoying. I guess I have to sign up. Damn you, compelling product.

</comment><comment><USER18> well, I guess it can really be only due to bandwidth reasons. It is a lesser known fact, that Spotify (in the same way as Skype), is relying on P2P behind the scenes.

Often, the music you listen to is streamed from other users, and so bandwidth load is a very crucial factor. Looks like Spotify can't afford harder load to their servers and they're gradually increasing the requirements.

But marketing their whole library as 320kbps is really disappointing. As a premium subscriber, I was under impression that it is what I was getting.

</comment><comment><USER19> It should definitely tell you something that he had to check file sizes to determine if the song was 320 kbps.

Spotify knows most users just don't care - so they don't really care either.

<comment><USER5> So... You are suggesting me to write this entire report based on "from what I heard, about 70% of the 100 tracks I auditioned are probably not at 320 kbps"?...

<comment><USER19> Well, it would have been interesting. There is, of course, quite a bit of controversy over what bitrates a normal person can distinguish. You make it sound like Spotify is being unreasonable, but I think they're being completely reasonable - if people can't hear the difference, why should they devote a large amount of their operational capacity towards making sure all their library is 320kbps?

I'm guessing Spotify would need to receive the 320kbps version from the label for it to be legal/work with their licensing. Can you imagine working with record labels? These are the guys that brought you the RIAA...working with them must be like pulling teeth. And doing all that work for almost no appreciation from your users (who can't tell the difference?).

If the listening experience is the same, your perception of the end product is the same - does it really matter? I mean, bad on Spotify for false advertising and everything, but I wouldn't chalk up their behavior as being a big deal.

I understand that for someone with good taste in music, like yourself, this matters. But for 90% of Spotify's users, I'll bet it doesn't.

<comment><USER5> Yes I understand, actually I know quiet a bit about how dinosaur like RIAA/IFPI make their lives:P

But as I quoted in my article, Spotify staff admitted that they got music in lossless from labels, and have the rights to convert and stream them in HQ.

To be frankly I know how this will end: most users don't care and the story sinks into nowhere. For my own interest I don't even want to do this, @Spotify tweeted about my blog about eight times since last year, and I'd assume it won't happen again after this post. The US launch tripled the traffic of my site, a post like this will only bore the new visitors away. I did this because I believe it's the right thing to do, and I still have faith in Spotify. That's all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I really don't understand how someone can complain on Spotify. It's a great service with very good sound quality at a decent price.

<comment><USER21> It is indeed a decent service, and I guess it was worth the money I've paid for it, but there certainly are a bunch of flaws. I miss a lot of my personal music library in it, for example, (and yes, while you can add them, but I pretty much only use/used spotify at work). To be honest, I didn't even remember to enable the HQ option when I had a paid subscription. I also use it on gnu/linux, where the windows client under wine for me is very sluggish (but only at work, not at home), and the native client still has ways to go.

Anyway, I seem to have gotten quite sidetracked, the point I was trying to make is that at least OP is giving them direct feedback and thus an opportunity to improve. While you think it's a great service, surely you can find some ways to improve it? I could, for example, live with a larger cache on the android app so that I can enter a store under ground without the music stopping when the cell service does...

<comment><USER20> It's always room for improvement on any service, but it's not really fair to complain that a service costing $10 a month is not suitable for critical classical listening on a stereo that cost $10.000.

Best step IMHO is to push more online music retailers to sell lossless files for critical listening or maybe Spotify could sell it, hopefully for more than $10 a month.

<comment><USER21> Eh, my stereo equipment didn't cost anywhere near ten grand, but I wager it can still show the difference between 160 and 320 kilobits of compressed music. From what I gathered from the op, though, it's not so much about the practical difference than the fact that he feels he's paying for something he's not actually getting - and that's something that is fair to complain about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Some of the albums I've been listening to (with HQ enabled) have raised red flags, I've recognized compression artifacts. But I dismissed this as being deliberate, a weird sounding microphone, an effect, or whatever, since the HQ box was checked in Spotify settings.

Time to investigate..

</comment><comment><USER23> what about rdio? Does anyone know?</comment>