Ask HN: How do you translate your app? - <AUTHOR> I'm in the process of translating portions of a web app of mine into multiple languages. I was wondering what sites/services some of you have used to help with the internationalization process. <comment><USER2> Assuming your code base is already internationalized (strings are separated from code, you're using libraries for things like plurals and number/date formats), then localizing your app is mainly about maintaining translated versions of the strings.

Your choice of tool should probably be informed by whether or not you will use paid translators and/or you hope that users will contribute some of the translations.

\- If your users are passionate enough that you can get multiple users contributing/checking translations for each language, then you could subscribe to CrowdIn or Transifex to host your strings. Your only cost will be the monthly fee.

\- If you need to pay translators for some/all language pairs, then you could use one of the platforms above, along with translators you find, or you could get a complete-ish service (platform + translations) from a single provider. ISTR both Smartling and Transifex do this.

In any case, think about:

\- How often strings will change, and what you'll do when they do

\- How you'll make sure that you don't translate the same strings multiple times (and pay multiple times). Most platforms that also provide translation will also have a Translation Memory for this purpose.

\- Whether and how you'll check the quality of translation

\- Whether you want to store the translation on your server (probably) or whether you want the translations served dynamically from a separate server (worth considering, IMO not worth it).

(I am a Product Manager at Google, working on our app translation service for Google Play developers. This service doesn't cover your use case, and the opinions above are my own, not Google's.)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've used WebTranslateIt and i18next.js, and found i18n and l10n to be much easier than I'd anticipated. While I've primarily worked with actual translators, I think WebTranslateIt has some automated translation options as well.

\- [https://webtranslateit.com](https://webtranslateit.com)

\- [http://i18next.com/](http://i18next.com/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Check out Transifex: [https://www.transifex.com/](https://www.transifex.com/). We built it for developers. There's an API and command-line client to make pushing/pulling content easy. A lot of people also integrate Transifex with Jenkins or some other CI tool.

Disclosure: I work there.

</comment><comment><USER5> We use CrowdIn, for Cachet. It's pretty good and even suggests translations for you.

</comment><comment><USER6> I built a shitty CRUD web app with that links to a web form the texts I want to translate - stored in a database - and ask my friends who speak other languages to translate them.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have used [http://gengo.com/](http://gengo.com/) for localization of mobile apps.

</comment><comment><USER8> I use smartling at work. There are a host of similar services out there</comment>


Custom business software for $12/hour  - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/your-business/business-categories/customer-experience/custom-business-software-for-12-bucks-an-hour/article1757284/ <comment><USER2> "get ready for this – access to first-quality software developers at the very low cost of $12 an hour. "

followed further down by:

"Lots of rough edges: For all its simplicity and low cost, Applane is not Salesforce or LiquidPlanner or Basecamp. And you will feel it. Features are rugged. Google Ranking data and sales conversion tools were not first-rate. And do not expect that fun Web 2.0 feel of a BatchBook, or even a Capsule CRM Tool. Plus, overall, the code can be slow, particularly for larger databases. The company said it is upgrading to new server technology to address that issue."

These two seem in conflict.

<comment><USER3> Even without that second statement, $12 is well below market rate in India, where the IT talent market is extremely competitive. There are some great people there, but expect to pay somewhere in the range of $40-50 for "first- quality" software developers, which is still well below US rates for comparable talent but not the cost advantage it might at first seem.

<comment><USER4> Well, after having read the article... it appears that you pay $12/user/month (after the first 2) from your business for the software, plus $12/hour for development.

So, you actually are paying more for the add-ons to their software, plus you're locked in to their system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's an interesting approach, because presumably Applane continues to own any customization work they do and can feed back changes into their core product. Essentially subsidizing the company's cost of development.

Plus given the customers are paying for the new features, they know it's features that their customers actually need (as opposed to want).

</comment><comment><USER6> [http://web.archive.org/web/20070629080910/http://www.namesys...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070629080910/http://www.namesys.com/support.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> Good luck to anyone who tries that. My experience suggests you're going to need it

<comment><USER8> You get what you pay for, this much is true.</comment></comment>


Zimbra from Yahoo - <AUTHOR> http://www.zimbra.com/about/

<comment><USER2> Zimbra is used as the email system for a university I attended and it is a terrible, buggy pos.

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't go that far. Zimbra was the first client I was willing to use over Mutt. It taught me the value of Gmail-style conversation threading. It has strong IMAP support, and a reasonable J2ME client. It never ate my data, and I was able to use it on a daily basis for a year.

"Gmail killer" is wonderfully hyperbolic, but in its space, it's really not a bad option. Especially when measured against other self-hosted webmail + calendaring solutions. Of which there are two: Horde and Outlook Web Access.

I'm personally pulling for Bongo (<http://bongo-project.org/>), but I think it's more likely that this space will be ceded to Google Apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've worked for a ~100 person company that switched from Exchange to Zimbra last year.

While many aspects of the system work great, others are buggy, difficult, or practically useless. (For example, the calendar features are miserably immature, and the web interface is clunky and eschewed by most employees.)

The company is currently considering switching back to Exchange.

</comment><comment><USER5> My previous company used Zimbra for 6 month, after 3 months almost everybody switched to Gmail, it was an absolute pain to use back then, after 6 months we got rid of Zimbra. It was 2 years ago.

We're using Zimbra at work right now. It got better, but it's not even close to Gmail when it comes to read/write/manage emails: it's slow, and has numerous quirks. But it has a built-in IMAP & SMTP server, so you don't need to use the webmail.

But it's also doing much more than Emails, it's definitely a good alternative to Exchange, but switching from Gmail to Zimbra? I wouldn't even think about it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Exchange killer.

<comment><USER7> The pricing and marketing copy for Zimbra are all pretty clearly geared at the enterprise/educational market rather than consumers. So yes, Exchange killer.

Yahoo's consumer email product is, obviously, Yahoo Mail, which has massively higher market share than Gmail. If anything, GMail is supposed to be a Yahoo Mail killer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I use gmail at home, zimbra at work.

Advantages of Zimbra:

-Group calendaring

-Folders (having to subscribe to a bunch of FOSS email lists at work I appreciate just filling away the mailing lists into a folder for later, way better than Gmail's way with the tags and searching and stuff)

Advantage of Gmail:

-Better search of archived mail

Zimbra seems to have some more quirks than gmail that are getting better. They both have decent iPhone interfaces. I wouldn't give up Gmail for Zimbra at home, but for work Zimbra does the job equal or better than Gmail.

<comment><USER9> > having to subscribe to a bunch of FOSS email lists at work I appreciate just > filling away the mailing lists into a folder for later, way better than > Gmail's way with the tags and searching and stuff

Sorry. I feel like I'm bringing up VIM vs. Emacs or something here, but please explain how folders are in any way different from tags and filters.

Why can't you just create a filter that tags your FOSS stuff and then auto- archives it?

<comment><USER10> Tags can't be nested.

<comment><USER11> In GMail, a simple slash will nest the tags if you're accessing it from an IMAP client. Also, if you start the tag it'll show up as a subfolder of your inbox. Filtering mailing lists to INBOX/ml/foo, INBOX/ml/bar and auto- archiving works quite well for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Even if it was better than GMail it would take at least a year or two to start replacing Gmail users, until there google will be workig harder adding new features to Gmail what will make users don't switch to Zimbra.

So Zimbra isn't Gmail's killer and won't be anytime soon.

</comment><comment><USER13> i play frisbee with a guy who's a top IT guy at a leading telecom company. he says they went back to outlook from zimbra. they are now looking at google apps since it has full full outlook support.

</comment><comment><USER14> zimbra is great but it's not free for all unlike gmail.

<comment><USER15> So not true. The Community Edition is completely free and we use it at my company.

What do you not get with the CE? No Outlook connector, no Apple iSync plugin, no mobile BES plugin, and no ability to delegate the administration of specific domains to particular users. But for a plug-and-play solution, it's awesome. POP3, IMAP, LDAP, CalDav (including Free/Busy times extensions) work flawlessly. Uses Postfix for the SMTP so you can do lots of tricks behind the scene if necessary. Administration is a breeeze. My company migrated to Zimbra from our home-grown Qmail/CourierIMAP solution, and it's one of the best IT Infrastructure decisions we've ever made.

<comment><USER16> Also, No hot backups. For companies that need email without downtime this could be a deal breaker.

I administer the CE version at my work and it is a mostly no fuss package and was much better than the collaboration platform that we were using.

<comment><USER17> You could get around that by making a snapshot LV on Linux. Instant, point in time volume that you can now back up, then destroy later.

<comment><USER16> Is there a problem with restoring it if when you took a snapshot the database had unfinished transactions? I guess you just would not have the transactions written to disk and would lose whatever changes were being made.

Could there be a time where you take a snapshot when the database is writing the transactions to disk and corrupts the snapshots db? or is the LV smart enough to handle that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> why is this on the front page? its not related to gmail. its not new. its not hacker news related.

</comment><comment><USER19> How would Zimbra be a Gmail killer if Yahoo Mail has many times more users than Gmail?

</comment><comment><USER20> Zimbra is good, but it's not Gmail.

</comment><comment><USER21> I knew a guy who dated a girl that used to date a guy who worked in the IT dept of a company that used to have Exchange and then switched to Zimbra but now uses Google Apps. For what it's worth

;)</comment>


Ask HN: Google repeatedly thinks I'm a robot - <AUTHOR> Is anybody else experience this, asked around in a few slack chats and coworkers and they are all going through this. <comment><USER2> Are you using a VPN or sharing an IP with something that might be making wget requests or similar to Google APIs?

Whenever I channeled my traffic through my own VPN (Digital Ocean), I would get the "Are you a robot?" screen very often (at least hourly).

</comment><comment><USER3> I have my browser set to delete all cookies every time I close it. I've been doing this for years but lately, every time I decide to alter my search settings, I get a Captcha. I have tested this at work and it does the same thing there.

I suspect that this is intentional and a way to punish people who are trying to avoid tracking cookies.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yep. If you move around in google faster than "normal" humans it's flagging that behaviour more lately. I suspect some malicious (i.e. made by content thieves) web scraping instrumentation frameworks have added more natural human behaviours to their capabilities but still operate at a higher-than-"normal human" rate and those of us who are highly adept at legitimately utilizing google now fit into that new classifier slot. It's been super annoying.

</comment><comment><USER5> It likely has to do with your IP address. Two possibilities that I can think of:

1) You are all on a VPN that's hosted at AWS or another cloud provider. Google assumes you to be a bot based on the IP address being in a data center.

2) Someone is doing a lot of scraping through a computer in the office, which triggered Google to flag your office IP address for bots (which in this case would technically be correct)

<comment><USER6> 3) using modificators when you or someone else searches from your network.

If not try with a turing test.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This happens when you use a VPN but also occurred to me from time to time when just searching lots of things really fast...

Also: It's utterly frustrating to pick cars, front-end stores, bridges etc. The process is also slow as hell. Worst UX ever for a problem that's really not mine but actually theirs.

</comment><comment><USER8> Its all nice for generic searches, but whenever I try to pin down something that I know exists but can't find anymore they start throwing captchas at me. And I never find what I am looking for.

</comment><comment><USER9> Google doesn't even trust itself. My VPN is hosted on GCP and I get these regularly. Sometimes the header is missing and I have to guess which item I'm trying to select.

</comment><comment><USER10> Are you a robot?</comment>


Are rounding errors a crime? - <AUTHOR> http://nickbruun.dk/2012/03/30/are-rounding-errors-a-crime/

<comment><USER2> Sure, bugs and/or undefined behavior could happen for a variety of reasons. And that's precisely where we leave the relatively objective realm of computer programs and get into the murky waters of law. There's this thing called "intent" - "did the programmer _mean_ to defraud the bank (and possibly enrich himself), or was it an unfortunate coding error?" - and it's notoriously tricky to prove or disprove, as you can't just attach a debugger to the programmer and take a peek ;)

So: making errors, per se, is mostly not a crime (but you may want to get a good lawyer anyway - criminal negligence and all that); writing _deliberately_ faulty code is quite another thing - even though the result may be indistinguishable. To use a bad analogy, the end result "stabbing Joe in the chest" might be reached by being extremely clumsy with your steak as well as by having a knife-fight.

That said, following the money is usually a good rule-of-thumb: if (as the story goes) the pennies rounded off third parties' transactions were deposited into an unrelated account, that alone might have sufficed to establish _mens rea_.

(This specific story is in circulation since the beginning of electronic transactions in the banks - i.e., since 1960s - and it may be an urban legend FWIW; but that's hardly the point. Also, IANAL.)</comment>


Google Screws Facebook Home, Requires Apps To Be Updated via Play Store - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/26/google-crashes-facebook-homes-easy-updating-party-now-requires-all-play-apps-to-be-updated-through-the-play-store/

<comment><USER2> It's not so much that Google "screws" Facebook as they changed their policy so that apps can no longer push updates. ALL apps must now be updated through the play store. This title is misleading at best. Facebook is no more screwed by Google than anyone else with an app.

</comment><comment><USER3> All they have to do is update using Play? Which they usually do anyway? Hardly screwed...

<comment><USER4> Fairly recently Facebook changed their app to do all updates through the app instead of Play. It's easy to go back to Play but it's not what they usually do anymore, at all.</comment></comment>


BBC looks to copy protect content - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8259154.stm

<comment><USER2> I wonder whether this is other copyright holders trying to get the BBC on- board. I've read an article before HD could represent the end of unencrypted analogue output, and how companies are trying to control the recording of programs.

<http://writersblocklive.com/hd-boycott-2006-02> <http://www.aacsla.com/specifications/>

It seems to me that the license fee in the UK is under constant attack for being "unfair", but in reality it sets the bar and makes UK television cheap and high quality. For example I think if you wanted Sky TV it would cost you £17 per month for a basic package.

The more that people have to subscribe to television the more we have to pay for watching the same programmes again. I'm all for copyright holders making a profit but not sitting on stale programming for 30 years. At some point this content should be in the public domain, like the Gutenberg project.

</comment><comment><USER3> This article is a little bit misleading because it's not really copy protection.

The BBC aren't allowed to encrypt content at all but they're proposting to encrypt only HD content over DVB-T2, known as Freeview (OTA for Americans).

There's two things which they're asking for (feel free to correct me if the transport stream technicalities are wrong).

Obfuscation of the service information data with a huffman code lookup table. The SI allows transport stream demuxers to work out how to split the transport stream up with information like video types, audio tracks, clock info etc...This can all be worked around easily.

The other is full encryption which won't be allowed because it will delay set top boxes and there won't be any on the shelves during the World Cup, which is basically an HD flagship event.

There's no encryption on satellite nor on cable anyway so it's a bit of a moot point.

</comment><comment><USER4> Ironically they're trying to subvert their own contract terms.

They've agreed to broadcast unencrypted "free to air" content, but now they're trying to encrypt the program guide data in order to force set top box makers to pretend(!) that the data really is encrypted by rendering their products useless if they dont.

It's yet another new low for DRM.

Hopefully the regulatory body will reject this bit of tomfoolery.

More info here on the tech-savvy MP's blog (particularly in the comments, which refute the fear of this making set top boxes any more obsolete, and provide other details):

[http://www.tom-watson.co.uk/2009/09/personal-video- recorders...](http://www.tom-watson.co.uk/2009/09/personal-video-recorders- ofcom-consultation-indicates-that-the-bbc-want-to-make-yours-obsolete/)

<comment><USER3> It's not actually the programme guide. It's a lot more than that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Claiming this will help reduce piracy is an asinine argument, virtually everyone in the UK pays for a TV License which means they've already paid for the content.

<comment><USER6> Maybe it will reduce piracy outside of the UK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> At least the BBC can write an objective article about their own controversial pursuits.

I think they need to look at their regional restrictions. I can never watch any of the football or other sport clips.

<comment><USER8> Sports is very expensive to get a broadcast license for ($millions).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> TV licensing seems like such a weird concept after living in the US

And now looks a bit corrupted if they are going so far as to put DRM on broadcast streams

</comment><comment><USER10> _BBC HD has proved extremely popular_

<a picture of a swimming elephant in 226x170 pixels>

Waaah?</comment>


Charts suggest .au's housing bubble is out of control - <AUTHOR> http://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/the-charts-that-suggest-the-housing-bubble-is-out-of-control-20160224-gn2b46.html <comment><USER2> "over 40 per cent of all new mortgages originated have been interest-only mortgages."

Well that's not good.</comment>


Experiences in Failed Startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ad6bo/has_anyone_ever_worked_for_a_startup_company_that/

<comment><USER2> I'll add mine here as I'm having a problem logging into Reddit.

Startup 1: a product for online shopping sites to use to help customers make complex purchasing decisions. It was difficult to use (required user take a questionnaire) and was one more cost for ecommerce sites to consider. I was there only for a short, 70-hour-a-week stint as a contractor. The company and people seemed nice enough, but I've never seen a market for what they made.

Startup 2: Took a job as a manager of "professional services" (before I understood what that meant) for a business banking software startup. It had VC cash and was burning through it faster than it was getting customers. They sold, likely very cheaply, to a competitor eventually. I'd have stayed longer, but the "professional services" essentially meant travel, contrary to what I understood in the interview, so I left fairly quickly. The company just tried growing staff and office space faster than their revenues. I don't really know how or if the founders did on the sale, but it wasn't the huge success hoped for.

Startup 3: Mine! A rental listing site. Partnered with a "business" guy who couldn't really offer much. Went after a market just dripping with competitors, including rent.com, apartments.com and some guy named Craig. Faced chicken/egg problem in multiple ways. Hard to convince savvy landlords to list if no one else has. Hard to convince savvy landlords to list if no renters visit the site. Hard to convince renters to visit if no properties are on the site. Hard to convince search engines to rank me for much if no listings on my new site.

#3 wasn't all bad. I did get people to list and get organic traffic, but just not enough to sustain the project. I worked the longest and learned the most from the rental site. As a professional, coding a web app from CSS to the database, managing customers and system administration stretched me and helped me like nothing I'd done before.

And that's why I'm looking to make my future #4 a success. :-)

</comment><comment><USER3> Before: Lame QA Automation Gigs

Startup 1: Lucision - process-flow based document organization for law firms. <http://www.memestreams.net/users/jello/blogid315504> Saved money and moved to India to build a prototype. Lawyer friend bailed.

End State: The Beach. The Himalayas. The Dalai Lama's birthday party.

Startup 2: Upon return to states, kept the company name, changed the tune - <http://www.lucision.com> Web-based appliance for slot machine analytics. Focused on tribal market. Raised seed money, lots of industry press, beta install at one casino, integrated with leading casino management system. Slugged it out for two years as salesman and developer, and doomed self to failure with a front-heavy pricing model (coulda signed up many casinos for a monthly fee), bizarre denial about the reality of a two year sales cycle, gross underestimation of competition, FOSS stack in an MS centric market, being a lone founder after the first three months, selling to the gaming market from Atlanta (why!?) when I should have been in Vegas, too much time spent very ineffectively trying to raise money, and figuring out what the hell I was doing. Should have failed way, way sooner.

End State: "Hey, with my experience I can now get good jobs!"

Startup 3: <http://www.starcaller.com> Star Caller - went to beach to relax after a couple years of intense international consulting, surfing buddy is a film hustler... a startup happened. Didn't go full time on it, learned a lot about producing multimedia and the film industry. Think we coulda made this work if we were in LA - we had leads, just not a thick pipeline. Still get calls from studios to pitch them campaigns - decline. Was always a sideline.

End State: "Hey, cool - I know about (prematurely) scaling things using AWS!"

Startup 4: Cloud Stenography <http://www.cloudstenography.com> \- prototyped a web-based Apache Pig GUI. Early abort - after some good interest, decided I had insufficient personal savings to even think about pursuing a company.

End State: "Hey, I know Hadoop - I can get a job in Silicon Valley in big data!" Moved to Silicon Valley.

I've lost a lot of money tanking startups, but its worked out reasonably well career wise. I can't sit in a classroom for more than 15 minutes without going nuts, so I figure I got my street MBA and some technical skills. Did a lot of consulting in between. Can't say I regret anything other than not moving to Silicon Valley sooner.

My next company will be with talented people from my network, in silicon valley, solving a data problem that cures someone's pain.

<comment><USER4> "a front-heavy pricing model (coulda signed up many casinos for a monthly fee), bizarre denial about the reality of a two year sales cycle, gross underestimation of competition, FOSS stack in an MS centric market, being a lone founder after the first three months, selling to the gaming market from Atlanta (why!?) when I should have been in Vegas, "

Are you talking about yourself there ? It almost looks like a third-person narrative.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, its like describing a dead body :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> not mine, but I just saw an interview between Andrew Warner and Andrew Fashion...and holy shit.

Basically the guy was making $200K a month from a myspace layout site(was the top result on Google), felt like he was on top of the world(bought a few BMWs cash), then he decided to improve the user experience and completely redesigned the site.

Well he forgot to do an htaccess redirect, and overnight he lost almost all of his traffic, since Google kicked him down to page 8, since w/o htaccess they felt he was a brand new site.

Then he spent $30K buying SEO, and only got up to page 5.

Then he tried to get some help by partnering up with some guy from Australia, and the guy stole his site(had access to the server), and released it as a $20 script template, so overnight there were hundreds of clones.

So within a few months, he went down from making $200K a month to $5K a month.

Seriously once Andrew throws up the site on mixergy, you have to go watch it.

<comment><USER6> Wait, he had a #1 result and he changed URLs or something? If so he deserves the loss.

<comment><USER5> he rewrote urls with mod rewrite, from the interview I got the idea that basically the entire site was redesigned from scratch.

He was using php before, and his entire structure was the usual ?p=123

<comment><USER6> Ah, yeah. I mean, call me nuts, but if I built something from scratch, owned 100% of it, got a #1 Google result, and was making $200k/mo, I'd be far too busy drinking champagne to go mess up my URLs.

<comment><USER7> Plus, never fix what aint broken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If anyone wants to share their failed startup story on Mixergy, email me.

There's a lot to learn from these stories, as you can see from vaksel's comment here.

<comment><USER9> Andrew, keep up the great work. You're killing it with these interviews. I hope the ad revenue is making them worth your time.</comment></comment>


John Horton Conway, a 'Magical Genius' in Math, Dies at 82 - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/technology/john-horton-conway-dead-coronavirus.html <comment><AUTHOR> This particular obituary is from Siobhan Roberts, who wrote a well regarded biography of Conway, "Genius at Play" ([https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/22529392-genius-at- pl...](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/22529392-genius-at-play)). I recommend it highly, even if you have read others.</comment>


VisiData 1.0 released - <AUTHOR> http://visidata.org/releases/ <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16515299](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16515299), which is currently on the front page.

</comment><comment><USER3> Never heard of this before. Looks like a great tool.

Check out the demo in another thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16515299](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16515299)

</comment><comment><USER4> It is completely unclear what this tool does, or why I'd use it, from visiting the website.

That might be a problem.</comment>


Politely refusing to talk to DHS checkpoints - <AUTHOR> http://boingboing.net/2013/03/06/politely-refusing-to-talk-to-d.html <comment><USER2> Remember these words "am I being detained or am I free to go?"

If yes, great!

If no, ask "on what grounds am I being detained?"

If there's no good answer, but they detain you anyhow- you may have an out later (in court). Always Follow the officers directions after you've asked these 2 questions.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't see why this is being upvoted on HN. This is reddit material, isn't it? I'm failing to see how this is applicable here.

<comment><USER4> Interesting, yes, but definitely reddit material.</comment></comment>


Show HN: DataSpeeder Instant End-User Web GUI for MySQL - <AUTHOR> https://www.dataspeeder.com <comment><USER2> I like the look of this. It's amazing how nothing ever really grew to fill the void Access/FileMaker pro left - yeah I know they're still around but barely used.

Also, and off-topic, but I wish PostgreSQL had some official 'test' databases that people could download to learn SQL with, Northwind-style.

<comment><USER3> Not exactly what you're looking for, but Splitgraph [3] has some solid datasets you can mess with.

Also, seekwell [0] might be able to fill that void depending on your use case and we're rapidly making improvements. So far we have highly customizable Forms [1] and editable tables [2] which you can add to a dashboard and expose to non-technical people on your team. We have a company with over 100 people in sales and operations using this daily. Supports Postgres, MySQL, Snowflake and SQL Server.

0 - [https://seekwell.io/](https://seekwell.io/)

1 - [https://www.notion.so/Forms-6c37026024db4f7a8b149f5bd38d7cf5](https://www.notion.so/Forms-6c37026024db4f7a8b149f5bd38d7cf5)

2 - [https://www.notion.so/Parameters-e18b84a0e07d42ba981a449e2e5...](https://www.notion.so/Parameters-e18b84a0e07d42ba981a449e2e5..).

3 - [https://www.splitgraph.com/](https://www.splitgraph.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not to knock this product; it's really impressive, and I like it, but it makes me wonder: does nobody just use phpmyadmin (or some phpmyadmin-like) for this kind of thing?

I have, and it's worked for me; even if it's a little daunting at first.

<comment><USER5> Come on, it's the last thing I want to show to a non dev, or even to a dev. phpMyAdmin's interface is so cluttered, and way harder in the eyes for anyone who just want to go through the data and not deal with every part of the database with knobs all over the place, it's like sitting in a cockpit.

<comment><USER6> For sure, I think it's good for another purpose (playing with phpMyAdmin taught me to write queries by hand!)

<comment><USER4> I also got into the more nitty-gritty nuances of mysql through with phpmyadmin. Many things I find being done on client side "dashboard" applications can be handled by a mysql view, which can then be pulled up in phpmyadmin.

<comment><USER7> >> I also got into the more nitty-gritty nuances of mysql through with phpmyadmin.

Have to say phpmyadmin is underappreciated. Guess a bit of UI makover can do wonders for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Congrats! Looks similar to [https://popsql.com/](https://popsql.com/) who just happened to raise a $3.4M seed round in this space:

[https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/08/popsql-raises-3-4m-seed- ro...](https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/08/popsql-raises-3-4m-seed-round-for- its-collaborative-sql-editor/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the links ... I'll take a look at popsql.com and see what they're about. Very impressive, and good for them!

@DataSpeeder | www.dataspeeder.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Holy cow, I really like this. Super simple.

I think you need to adjust pricing to differentiate between big corporate users and small developers. I'd pay $199 once (not per year) for my own use. But if I were running an IT shop at a larger corp, I'd pay a lot more. See if there is a way to expand your pricing both at the high and the low end.

Like all simple apps, I expect I'd run into roadblocks quickly without some customizability. The trick for you is to figure out how to add some of that without losing your main value prop, which is simplicity.

In particular, I'm sure I would want to customize screens. I didn't download the app and try it so I don't know if that's there, but I didn't see it in the video.

Also, consider supporting Postgres. MySQL and SQL Server usage are trending down, and Postgres is trending up.

[https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&geo=US&q=%2Fm%2F04y3k,%2Fm%2F05ynw,%2Fm%2F0120vr)

<comment><AUTHOR> > Holy cow, I really like this. Super simple.

Thanks! You have no idea how nice that is to hear. Making something work is one thing, making it simple is another. A lot of effort went into designing it to be simple, so reading that, you've given me a lift. :)

> I think you need to adjust pricing to differentiate between big corporate > users and small developers

Thanks for the pricing feedback, that's incredibly useful as well.

> I expect I'd run into roadblocks quickly without some customizability. The > trick for you is to figure out how to add some of that without losing your > main value prop, which is simplicity.

> In particular, I'm sure I would want to customize screens ... Also, consider > supporting Postgres.

Great feedback. Moving forward anything is possible, but a lot is going to depend on this kind of great feedback. I need to focus on the new features that users need for their deployments. I'm hoping to learn what these valuable required enhancements are by engaging with the users who try out the tool.

"Screen customizing" would currently include being able to reorder fields, whether individual fields are visible or invisible and editable or read-only on the view/edit/create pages. Also whether the fields are visible as columns in the main display table, and whether those columns are sortable. And there's also the ability to choose appropriate editor widgets based on data type when appropriate (date-pickers, drop-down lists, and so on).

The "Create an Application" video tutorials on www.dataspeeder.com/support show a lot of these features.

Thanks again for taking the time to write!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Website is quite slow. I'm sure you're under load RN, but if possible I'd recommend setting the site behind a CDN (there's a free tier of Cloudflare). Best of luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for letting me know! Hosted at GoDaddy.

I'll see if there's anything I can get them to do to fix it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Looks great, there's a very defined use-case and the video is very clear.

Does anyone know of any other similar piece of software, preferably open source, that allows for complete customization? I have another use-case different from the one on this product and I could use some advice.

<comment><USER12> That does everything from ingesting an existing database to forms? Not really, not perfectly (not that this is "perfect" either).

There's some things that get close though, like Directus (directus.io). API- wise there's PostgREST ( [http://postgrest.org/](http://postgrest.org/) ), PostGraphile ( [https://www.graphile.org/postgraphile/](https://www.graphile.org/postgraphile/) ) and Hasura ( [https://hasura.io/](https://hasura.io/) ). Commercially there's Supabase ([https://supabase.io/](https://supabase.io/)) which is new and based on PostgREST and their own tooling, and SubZero ( [https://subzero.cloud/](https://subzero.cloud/) ) which is similar.

There are some non-ingestion (requires you to use the frontend) headless CMS options that may also fill this space ( [https://headlesscms.org/](https://headlesscms.org/) ) if you tilt your head and squint.

This space seems to be growing, primarily on the API side, I imagine the frontend side may be next.

Currently my favorite is PostgREST and custom VueJS forms (using Quasar for "rapid dev"), but requires lots of 'bring your own' work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm curious to know how you handle relationships and communicate that in a beginner-friendly way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi -- thanks for asking! I'm especially proud of that part of the application because it took a lot of effort to get right ... it was actually the most difficult part to design and implement. In the end, I'm very happy with the result.

You can see a video demo of configuring and using Data Relationships in "Create an Application (Part 3)" here ...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ_1FtwsB6A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ_1FtwsB6A)

Note: Links to videos "Part 1", "Part 2", and "Part 3" can be found at: [https://www.dataspeeder.com/support](https://www.dataspeeder.com/support)

Does that help? If you had a more specific question about it, let me know and I'll try to elaborate (or simplify ;-).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Quite liked the demo video and landing page. Simple and easy to use GUI. Pricing is a bit steep.

Does this provide full schema edit operations like creating index, triggers etc ?

We are in similar space but as an API framework[1] for all SQL Databases.

So with GUI, one also gets REST/GraphQL APIs instantly on any SQL database.

However, I should admit our data browser is basic. And product is free.

[1] : [https://github.com/xgenecloud/xgenecloud](https://github.com/xgenecloud/xgenecloud)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words!

DataSpeeder is intended to give devs and db admins (who live in the world of power tools like PhpMyAdmin and MySQL Workbench) the ability to provide a simple web GUI for non-admin end-users to view/modify data. So it was intentionally designed without admin-level functionality like editing the database schema directly.

Thanks for the link to your tool, I will look into it.

Actually, one of the (many) features that I (with my coder hat on) would like to implement next is exposing the data via REST APIs. But I (with my manager hat on) need to focus on the specific features that users say are most needed for their deployments.

By the way, let me know if you see an organic way that our tools could work together and complement each other. Partnering would be cool!

Thanks again.

<comment><USER7> Downloaded for trying it out. Setup steps are too many unfortunately.

Happy to have a chat. My email is registered with you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Possibly OT, but I appreciate that the screenshots are in Firefox

<comment><AUTHOR> I started using Firefox instead of IE way back when it was new, and (flirtations with Safari notwithstanding) I've never had a compelling reason to stop using it. So I'm still on board.

Also, I like the way the black title bar frames the application window. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hey, please don't put a URL at the bottom of every comment. You can add it to the "about" section of your user page ([https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=DataSpeeder](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=DataSpeeder)), which is linked to from the top of every comment you make. Thanks :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the help. I'm new to the forum, and I thought a sig might be useful, but I want to be a good citizen. I will remove it everywhere now. Thanks again!

(Update: Looks like I have no 'edit' option for posts that are not new. I won't be able to remove the link from all of them, but I'll do what I can!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hey, congrats on getting this out. My product (1) is in the same space. Just watching your video. Are you allowing complex queries through your GUI? Like Grouping, Aggregates or even JOINs? That is what I am focusing on initially. Airtable for RDBMS.

1) [https://github.com/brainless/dwata](https://github.com/brainless/dwata)

<comment><USER9> I don't get that at all from your website. I'd consider simplifying your pitch. I can't tell what you're selling from your site.

<comment><USER16> Hey thanks. That is not the site, that is the open source project, so meant for technical audience I would say.

What would you say was not clear to you? I have been demoing this to a couple people each week and would love your feedback.

The site also needs updates, but the pitch is more for businesses there. Here is the site: [https://dwata.com](https://dwata.com)

<comment><USER9> Yes, the site is what I looked at. "Scale your business operations" doesn't tell me anything. Nor does any of the other verbiage in your hero area.

The next thing I see is "What is your professional role?" Uh, who cares? Just tell me what your product is. I'm not interested in vague benefits.

<comment><USER16> Thanks, yes the hero needs cleaning. I haven't been focusing on the product site for some time.

I'm also going to clean the personas. People usually like that, so I'll have to ask more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Reminds me of Django's build in admin dashboard...something that's been super useful for debugging, QAing, etc.

<comment><USER18> To be honest, Django Admin seems much more evolved that the product showcased here.

With DA, you can fully customize the UI, have fine grained access control, create any kind of custom action, etc.

Requires you to use Django ORM to manage your DB schema though. But I would rather have an ORM/migration tool anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> In the spirit of sharing related work, there was another Show HN post about 7 months ago for ESQLate, which seems similar: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22073037](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22073037)

</comment><comment><USER20> I wonder if this will tip the scales away from Django being a favorite in Python development since this will destroy one of its USPs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the response, I'll look into Django and the Django community in more detail.

If you have any direct links to appropriate Django articles, communities, or tutorials to share, that would be great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Reminds me of FileMaker, MS Access, Kexi or Glom.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I think that's placing me in the right ballpark and where I want to be. I had not heard of Kexi or Glom, so I'll look into them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Looks nice! Can you elaborate how this compares to some open source solutions, for example react-admin?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

> Can you elaborate how this compares to some open source solutions, for > example react-admin?

I would say that ...

React-Admin is a programming framework that a skilled React programmer can use to produce an application with great features that are limited only by the skills, drive, and dev time of the programmer. It looks like a very impressive and powerful programming framework to me.

DataSpeeder, on the other hand, is not a programming framework. It is a finished application that is ready to run immediately, can be deployed by a non-programmer, and has intentionally simple features that were designed to solve a specific problem ... Providing an instant end-user web GUI for MySQL.

To see the differences in how the tools are used, you can take a look at this (very nice!) React-Admin tutorial ...

[https://marmelab.com/react-admin/Tutorial.html](https://marmelab.com/react- admin/Tutorial.html)

And then take a look at the DataSpeeder "Create an Application" video tutorials ...

[https://www.dataspeeder.com/support](https://www.dataspeeder.com/support)

I hope that helps!</comment></comment>


H-1B Worker Takes Suit Against CGA Law to High Court - <AUTHOR> http://www.law360.com/immigration/articles/749417/h-1b-worker-takes-suit-against-cga-law-to-high-court <comment><USER2> Paywalled.</comment>


Five founders left to split $36K after their tech startup sold for $82M - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2317924/Five-founders-left-split-just-36-000-tech-startup-gets-sold-82-million.html

<comment><USER2> 1\. Founders start a company with an awful name: !([http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/18500000/-The-Bad- Tou...](http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/18500000/-The-Bad-Touch- bloodhound-gang-18578368-800-600.jpg))

2\. Founders essentially sell a controlling stake in the company trying to keep it alive.

3\. New owners find out the founders are running it into the ground and tell these incompetents that they're not allowed to run this company they sold any more.

4\. Under new ownership, and with zero input from said sainted founders, the money men manage to turn this dog (pun intended) into a worthwhile enterprise.

5\. The people who created value (either by risking capital or making good management decisions or both) sell what they essentially built and cash in.

6\. The founders who've been doing who-knows-what for A DECADE sue because they only got $36,000 for the POS company they sold when Bill Clinton was still in office.

7\. Daily Mail says waaaaaaaah!

Listen, I'm sure it's not this simple, and - yeah - it's a cautionary tale for 23-year-olds who have some idea they want to milk for dinero long after their own usefulness has expired. But come ON!

Oh, also, they sold in a down market. I'm not so sure Zuckerberg, Dorsey or Systrom would have gotten anywhere near the deals they got if they were forced to find investors in 2000.

<comment><USER3> Basically what I thought when reading it too. Props for the Bloodhound Gang reference though!</comment></comment>


RoomScan: Get a Floor Plan in Minutes Just By Walking Around the Room - <AUTHOR> http://architizer.com/blog/roomscan-app/ <comment><USER2> Here's an alternative with a more interactive work flow: [http://magic- plan.com/](http://magic-plan.com/) .

<comment><USER3> Tried it. More bells but difficult to make accurate. Hard to use if you can't see the floor corners of a room or if dealing with short narrow spaces.

<comment><USER4> As did I, quite some time ago. I found it did a poor job with rooms that had actual _stuff_ in them, -particularly the corners. Seemed cool but I discarded it as an option even without an alternative. RoomScan has been making its way around the blogs and I tried it out the other day. It did a great job of capturing my non-rectangular kitchen (after I failed at my first attempt by ignoring the instructions to touch each wall, then the 1st and 2nd wall once more, then ending). Roomscan > for spaces with stuff and/or narrow spaces, or Magic-Plan > for empty spaces more wide open was basically my experience.

Easy enough to try both though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Quite disappointed - was hoping this was done through computer vision. Aren't there are apps that do this? By the time I've 'scanned' a room the way it's shown in the article, and if that method doesn't even give me heights, doors, windows and outlets, _and_ is only accurate to within half a foot - by that time I've measured it with my laser tape measure 3 times over.

<comment><USER6> And your laser tape translates those measurements into a floorplan that's digitally sharable?

<comment><USER7> My HOWTO:

1\. Obtain laser tape, pencil, and paper.

2\. Sketch out floor plan with pencil on paper in rough scale.

3\. Take laser tape and take needed measurements. Annotate measurements on your rough scale paper drawing.

4\. Go back to desk and open OmniGraffle (or Visio or whatever).

5\. Draw up a scale floorplan, exportable into any needed, industry standard formats.

6\. There is no step 6.

Some variation of this HOWTO has worked for me professionally for 2 decades. Sometimes, the _old way_ is better than a novel, high tech solution.

Edit: And yes, I did try the Roomscan app. It was tedious and inaccurate.

<comment><USER6> I bet someone once said the same thing about the laser tape replacing traditional tape measures.

<comment><USER5> No, absolutely nobody ever said that. The only con of a laser measure is the price (compared to a foldable analog one), but apart from that (and for the purpose of measuring rooms and buildings), a laser measure is superior in every way.

<comment><USER8> You can't see the laser dot in sunlight at a distance > 10m and for some measurements keeping the point steady is important but hard to do without a tripod. In both cases the laser can be inaccurate as you can't be confident in what you have measured. Obviously laser theodolites can solve these problems but are about 1000 times more expensive than a reel tape.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This seems to be in the neighborhood of Johnny Lee's thinking in Project Tango: [https://www.google.com/atap/projecttango/](https://www.google.com/atap/projecttango/) ... a lot of the information collected by the increasingly precise sensors is going to allow for next level of... something... I think Project Tango is an example of not knowing what the future is in sensing and looking for network effects to fill in the gap.

</comment><comment><USER10> Tried this app out a few days ago. The measurements in it are surprisingly good. I was finding it about ~10% out at most.

All in all, it is a very good (FREE!) app that can be used to get a decent idea of what might be needed in home renovation.

<comment><USER11> I had the opposite experience. It seemed really finicky about how smoothlyI had to move my tablet from one wall to the next .

<comment><USER12> Yeah, I couldn't really get it to work either. The preview seemed to be more or less accurate, but it wasn't able to generate the layout. I was trying to double tap to modify the dimensions manually, but it looks like the free version doesn't allow for it. I guess it's a hit or miss.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I hoped that either they got their hands on Project Tango device or worked with this team in Zurich - [http://www.i-programmer.info/news/192-photography- a-imaging/...](http://www.i-programmer.info/news/192-photography-a- imaging/6688-any-mobile-camera-can-be-a-3d-scanner.html)

Edit:

Btw, anyone who applied for Project Tango got back from them in any way? I didn't.

<comment><USER14> We heard back and got a device last week.

<comment><USER13> If so, they're being rude toward the rest of us.

<comment><USER14> They certainly had a ton of responses, and possibly they plan on working their way down a list or something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Could anyone possibly shed some light on what is used for measurement? gyro?

<comment><USER16> I was actually beginning work on a similar project. Essentially, it's using a combination of the accelerometer and the gyro to get the phone's position in 3D space. That is, when the accelerometer capture lateral velocity, it knows it's moving in a certain direction at a certain speed (until, of course, it receives an opposite velocity, at which point it stops).

<comment><USER17> Did you ever manage to get it to be accurate, though? I tried something similar but the accelerometer and gyro were nowhere near accurate enough.

<comment><USER18> It's unlikely to be standard inertial navigation, mems sensors drift with dead reckoning integration pretty quickly, even applying more sophisticated kalman filtering may not improve things indoors without GPS (or sufficient travel for GPS even if you could receive it consistently)... But, if you were to add "room-like" assumptions it might improve things pretty well, eg. when integrating a rotation, fit it to a 90 degree corner, similar with traversal, fit it to travel along a wall. With those basic assumptions, I'm guessing you can correct a lot of the raw integration drift. If this is true, my guess is it would start break down in unconventional rooms - octagonal rooms, non parallel walls, etc...

<comment><USER19> I wondered about doing something like this a while back - and it was the very quick cumulative error from double integration of acceleration data that stopped me from even trying. Clever idea getting the user to place the phone on the walls - as you say that would correct a lot of the errors. But also, as you say, unconventional room layouts get you back to square one so to speak.

<comment><USER18> I haven't played around with the latest generation of sensors, but if the time/distance error growth is small enough, maybe you can get model corrections down to the nearest 45 deg. If you can hit that threshold, you might end up fairly functional with possibly the next largest segment of non- rectangular rooms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Google's Project Tango ([https://www.google.com/atap/projecttango/](https://www.google.com/atap/projecttango/)) and Structure.io seem to be the most promising in this area.

I have difficulty seeing any professionals adopting RoomScan as it still seems more difficult than just using a laser measure.

</comment><comment><USER21> This would be nice if I can feed the output to my neato( or roomba).

</comment><comment><USER22> I got a lot more excited when I read about this a while ago (2012) [1]. It also states to be slightly more accurate. It also seems less cumbersome.

[1] [http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/126843-think-gps-is- cool-...](http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/126843-think-gps-is-cool-ips- will-blow-your-mind)

I haven't tried anything, but it seems there are already lots of solutions and this is just another approach.

</comment><comment><USER23> AppStore link: [https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/roomscan-app-that-draws- floo...](https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/roomscan-app-that-draws- floor/id571436618?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4)

Couldn't find it on my brief scan of the article.

</comment><comment><USER24> I've tried this a while ago. Did not work very well at all on an iPhone 4S, it would either tell me to re-try or come up with a plan that was completely off.

</comment><comment><USER25> "Your phone wasn't able to record all of the movement. Please try again"

can't get past 2 walls. iphone 4s

</comment><comment><USER26> HomeDepot should let people use this instead of charging 30 for a measure and loosing it 3 months later

</comment><comment><USER27> I usually Look at it for a few seconds and then think about what I want to do in there in my Brain.

</comment><comment><USER28> Does anyone know how it actually works?</comment>


Be a Frontend Engineer at reddit - <AUTHOR> http://blog.reddit.com/2013/11/be-frontend-engineer-at-reddit.html <comment><USER2> "strong backend programming skills" for a Frontend job?

Sure, having your frond-end developer know a bit of backend is a must. But "strong backend programming skills"? Wouldn't that person simply go work on the back end to get a better paycheck?</comment>


Actual drawbacks to omitting semi-colons? - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs/msg/428220ab8cd199d2

<comment><USER2> I think this style ("npm style") is trying too hard to be clever without much benefit. Classic JavaScript style (see: Crockford) has done just fine and is familiar to everyone who knows C-style syntax. No reason to change it now.

I'd rather consistently have semicolons at the ends of lines than crap like this:

        ;(x || y).doSomething()
        ;[a, b, c].forEach(doSomething)

It's easier to always include the semicolons at the end of statements rather than try to figure out the edge cases where missing a semicolon would change the behavior.

I'm also not a fan of the "comma-first" style, especially for var declarations...

        var foo
          , bar
          , baz
          ;

I prefer:

        var foo;
        var bar;
        var baz;

It's fewer lines, consistent, symmetrical, and it's impossible to introduce errors through copy/paste or reordering.

<comment><USER3> I've grown to prefer:

        var foo,
            bar,
            baz;

It seems less cluttered. You can of course introduce errors through copy/paste/reordering, but I think it's a reasonable tradeoff. I agree about comma/semicolon-first being strange though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I hate semicolons too, but I wouldn't recommend removing them in your javascript. Douglas Crockford says to use semicolons, so use semicolons. JS lint is a useful tool and its worth having your code conform to it.

If you really hate the syntax quirks of javascript like me, a better solution is to just preprocess it. CoffeeScript has made me really enjoy writing frontend ui code again. <http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee-script/>

<comment><USER5> True fact - CoffeeScript did the same for me even though it was heavily frowned upon by others.

Typically I omit them if I can. And I have no reason to do so other than I think it makes the code look cleaner (I am often quite zealous on proper indentation / return lines).

I figure if using them works for you, rock on. If you hate them and don't use them, rock on. I really don't get bothered by debugging others' code either way as long as it is "readable-formatted" and works.

I've found that usually you fall into a situation where you have a company standard and have no choice in the matter though, and it doesn't even make a crap what your personal preference is.

Edit: To be fair though I only got "Eagle" on the test, but I chalk that up to only giving the test about 5 minutes of my time, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well, there are a few narrow examples where omitting semicolons will lead to incorrect code. If you're a superhuman javascript whiz who never makes mistakes, then sure, leave out the semicolons. But for the rest of us mortals, it would be nice if you left them in.

<comment><USER7> Typical pant-wearer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The one place where this really bites me is return statements. For example:

        function x() {
           return
        	   2+3;
        }
        alert(x());

Every now and then I'll reformat a line by breaking it in two and it takes me 10 minutes to figure out why my code is not working.

<comment><USER9> damn it I forgot that - does anyone know how to make vim highlight this?

<comment><USER10> In your after/syntax/javascript.vim:

        syntax match javascriptReturnError /return\s*\n\r\?\s*\w.*$/

        ...

        highlight link javascriptReturnError Error

Obviously you can play around with the regex to tweak what matches.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Coding styles are like assholes. Everyone has one, and nobody likes to look at anyone else's." -- credited to Eric Warmenhoven

<comment><USER12> The analogy falls apart where people like to look at their own coding styles, but nobody likes to look at their own asshole. So the rule is more like "nobody likes to look at assholes at all", which is a pretty different situation from coding styles. That's a relevant enough distinction that I would call Warmenhoven's analogy a bad one, good for provoking a laugh but not for discussing coding styles.

<comment><USER11> Actually, I looked up Warmenhoven's quote on the net after posting, and the original was "nobody likes anyone else's". That eliminates that little semantic problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you prefer not to use semi-colons in JavaScript but need to add them for other's sake, you could try programming in CoffeeScript (<http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee-script/>), which is a language meant to be a bunch of small improvements to JavaScript that compiles into JavaScript. It doesn't require semi-colons. You can show others just the compiled JavaScript, and they need never know you are using something else.

Edit: ninja'd by railsjedi: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1762677>

</comment><comment><USER13> I realize semicolons aren't required for javascript, but I put them in anyways merely because I do so much coding in other languages where semicolons _are_ required that it's silly to try and modify my habits just because it's not a requirement to put in.

Just because you don't wear pants at home doesn't mean you're not going to feel silly showing up at work without them.

</comment><comment><USER14> There are numerous cases where lack of semicolons create ambiguous code which introduces bugs.

Here are some: <http://gist.github.com/612814>

Edit: Er, tried to paste code in-line but formatting got messed up.

<comment><USER15> Well, the code isn't _actually_ ambiguous (since the spec states well defined behaviour), just very easy to misinterpret.

<comment><USER16> Ambiguous to a human, vs. a compiler.

<comment><USER17> Ambiguous to a human who doesn't understand the rules of automatic semicolon insertion. Maybe such a human shouldn't be using javascript in the first place, instead of working in fear.

<comment><USER16> Human doesn't understand complex rule with counterintuitive corner case. Film at 11.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> On the "if we were to design a programming language" level, it seems that a feature like ASI (Automatic Semicolon Insertion) is not only useless but even harmful. Every programmer is required to learn the rules of the mechanism in order to understand others' code. Furthermore, it needlessly increases the amount of possible programming styles, which, in my opinion, is a bad thing.

C programmers have always used semicolons and never wasted a second thinking whether they should.

<comment><USER19> > C programmers have always used semicolons and never wasted a second thinking > whether they should.

And, as one who primarily writes in Python and Ruby, I always find myself omitting them, and spending more than a second wondering why they're necessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I always use semicolons in js because I usually compress the code down by removing superflous whitespace -- which would make this style of code not function at all.

<comment><USER21> A newline takes up just as many bytes as a semicolon.

<comment><USER22> But if you have a newline you generally have an indent. Furthermore, there are places in JS where semicolons are absent and newlines are not (after braces).

<comment><USER23> It's moot, anyway. Format your code for readability, and let a minifier handle making it smaller. Then let gzip finish the job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I leave semicolons out in my code. But it's python so I think that's ok.

<comment><USER25> I sometimes use semicolons in Python for convenience when writing short debug code. Fewer lines, fewer pound signs I have type to comment it out later.

e.g., print somevar, othervar; exit()

<comment><USER26> import pprint; pp = pprint.pprint

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I understand the pants thing.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm fine with coding conventions that aren't anal. Do I wear pants to my friends' houses? Yes. However, I won't go over there many times if the rule is that I have to wear black khakis I bought at Wal mart and have exactly 5 pockets.

Same for coding conventions. Want me to use camel casing for global variables even though I think it's hideous? Fine. Want me to put closing parenthesis on a newline by themselves on a multiline function call and I put it at the end of the last line? Find something better to do with your time.

Unfortunately, I don't know enough JavaScript to know where this falls.

</comment><comment><USER15> One related issue is how should one mark up code that _is_ intended to flow over multiple lines? Consider doing a long chain like:

MyObj.item.childItem.getAll()[0].properties... // etc.

It's common to want to split this over several lines. I am in favour of placing the the period at the end of the line to indicate that the expression continues. Other people prefer the dot to start the next line instead. I don't like the latter since the first line then looks like a mistakenly omitted semi-colon.

<comment><USER29> The dot is the operator.

It is customary to stack operators by indenting.

Why are lines without semi-colons at the end bad?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Um, ok, the ASI quiz is clearly lame: out of 41 I missed two and wasted one, and I know _no Javascript whatsoever_. So I'm not sure what that was supposed to prove.

</comment><comment><USER31> The problem is that there is an actual drawback to making semicolons optional: adding a newline between tokens can change the meaning of the code!

This "feature" is really just a bad idea. I would hope that it gets thrown out in future versions of the standard (is there one?), and use semicolons in the meantime.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am certain there are words of wisdom in The Pragmatic Programmer book that correlate to this post. I'll update my comment if I find it, but I'm sure someone here will remember it before me.

</comment><comment><USER32> I always use semicolons, because I also code in several other languages, that require them. But I have no problem, if someone leaves them out. This is how JavaScript was designed.

</comment><comment><USER33> I know this is about semi-colons.. but it's more the comma at first that I found weird.

Example of what I mean:

\- "Do a, b, c, ..." vs \- "Do a ,b ,c ,..."

</comment><comment><USER34> Considering semicolons are needed or optional in most languages why not just get in the habit of typing them? Sometimes that means I slip them in my Python code, but everything still works. Just makes more time for thinking about what the code is actually doing.

</comment><comment><USER35> Sometimes I wonder how many gigabytes of flamewars about "coding style" C-like syntax has caused.

<comment><USER36> Indeed. Something to be said for line oriented languages like Ruby, Python, shell-script, xBASE, BASIC (I said that?!?), et al.

This is how it is, now use your time to understand the bigger structure, not punctuation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> What? You should use in semi-colons.</comment>


Under the hood of GraalVM JIT optimizations - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/graalvm/under-the-hood-of-graalvm-jit-optimizations-d6e931394797 <comment><AUTHOR> Hm. I know this article was just about Graal, but I really wish there was just a little comparison and contrast to the status quo, C2.

I'm no expert, but I was under the impression that aggressive, speculative, inlining and partial escape analysis were also big parts of C2. PEA (I've read somewhere?) is much more powerful in Graal but I'm curious why that is an if inlining is handled any differently.

The authors other article seems to imply it is but that don't get into it either. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18138207](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18138207)</comment>


Hacker News in the Terminal - <AUTHOR> http://andrewvos.com/2013/08/02/hacker-news-in-the-terminal/ <comment><USER2> _There are no links to comments, because you should never read the comments._

wait, what? There are some great comments around here.

<comment><USER3> Right? It's a forum, not a link aggregator. Comments are the entire point.

<comment><USER4> Grabbing all the comments and intelligently displaying them in a terminal would require substantially more work, I suspect.

<comment><USER5> Then the author should say that. "You should never read comments" just doesn't make sense in HN when comments are the entire point of why I'm here.

Right now, I don't see why I should use this tool when I can just use elinks.

<comment><USER6> I used to use elinks with a filter (words.txt) by topic

      elinks -dump news.ycombinator.com | sed -n -e 's/\([0-9]\+\)\.\ \+\(\[.\+\]\)\+\(.*\)/\1: \3/p' | grep -f words.txt -i

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Or just use elinks, which works great: [http://i.imgur.com/FuxUew1.png](http://i.imgur.com/FuxUew1.png)

<comment><USER8> Unfortunately comments don't nest nicely in elinks. Otherwise it's great.

<comment><USER7> That's because HN uses an image tag to do the nesting and apparently elinks ignores the width property on image tags.

<comment><USER9> I'm quite disappointed that this is the case. I don't expect a crazy parallax motion-sickness inducing css3 but I do expect decent markup.

I was disappointed when you said they used images.

I was more disappointed when I looked at the source and realised it's _nested tables_.

For shame, HN. For shame.

<comment><USER10> If it bothers you submit a pull request that fixes it.

<comment><USER11> To where?

As far as I know, the current version of HN isn't open source.

<comment><USER12> Indeed it definitely isn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It should be possible to do this in a line of bash, this is my current start point -

      curl https://news.ycombinator.com | sed 's|<[^>]*>||g'

edit - for reference, this is being done in an osx 10.7.5 terminal, so ymmv

getting somewhereish, I only have a slight understanding of regex to be honest :)

      curl https://news.ycombinator.com | sed 's|<[^>]*>|-|g' | sed -e 's/</comment><comment>-/\'$'\n/g'

...

      curl https://news.ycombinator.com | sed 's|<[^>]*>|-|g' | sed 's|</comment><comment></comment><comment>|-|g' | sed -e 's/</comment><comment>-/\'$'\n/g'

</comment><comment><USER14> 50 commentators fail to get the comment joke... (he is British I spose)

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't get the British reference?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> comments are essential to much of HN

<comment><USER16> Yep, sometimes that's where the real story is at. Heck, one of today's front page posts is comprised almost solely of two HN comments.

<comment><USER17> I see one with three comments, but not one with two...

Oh well.

But, you're right, comments are really where places like HN shine.

<comment><USER16> I was referring to the blog post[1] which was basically a copy and paste of two comments on a previous HN post.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6146930](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6146930)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wrote this into Factor last year. It even has the orange color in the terminal!

[https://github.com/slavapestov/factor/blob/master/extra/hack...](https://github.com/slavapestov/factor/blob/master/extra/hacker- news/hacker-news.factor)

        IN: scratchpad USE: hacker-news USE: io.streams.256color [ hacker-news. ] with-256color`

Hacker News

1\. FBI pressures Internet providers to install surveillance software (news.cnet.com) 104 points by ojbyrne 2 hours ago | 32 comments

2\. Hard drive hack provides root access, even after reinstall (spritesmods.com) 200 points by pd0wm 5 hours ago | 46 comments

..

</comment><comment><USER19> _comments powered by Disqus_

</comment><comment> a-b Why not to use regular text browser like links or elinks?

$links [https://news.ycombinator.com/](https://news.ycombinator.com/)

</comment><comment><USER20> I was first interested in this post since I do most of my HN browsing via newsbeuter/w3m which are terminal applications. To post, the easiest way seems to be to just pull up the story in my web browser.

</comment><comment><USER21> Hmm..this might be enough to get me to try Ruby. Looks neat and I've been wanting to learn the language. I hate dependency plumbing but this looks like it might work out of the (my) box.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a very fun language. You should definitely give it a go.

</comment></comment><comment> a-b [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELinks](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELinks)

</comment><comment><USER22> I may have been more inclined to use this, if it did have the feature to read the comments!! More often than not, I go through the comments first just to gauge the quality of the article and only if I am satisfied do I actually go read the article. That's why I don't like using desktop rss tickers for HN.

</comment><comment><USER23> for just monitoring the news on a console I still use hackertop

[https://github.com/pkrumins/hacker-top](https://github.com/pkrumins/hacker- top)

</comment><comment><USER24> alias news='lynx [http://news.ycombinator.com'](http://news.ycombinator.com')

</comment><comment><USER25> Couldn't I just use links to get the same effect? But with the comments (what I consider the best part of HN)

</comment><comment><USER26> I've been reading HN in a terminal for a while via Emacs and w3m mode.

EDIT: or also, just use w3m outside of Emacs.

</comment><comment><USER27> Awesome little utility. Next step is letting me comment :).

</comment><comment><USER28> M-x hackernews

uses the api instead though.

</comment><comment><USER29> emacs-w3m is the best hacker news reader!

</comment><comment><USER30> Thanks!</comment>


Facebook acquires Mapillary - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mapillary.com/news/2020/06/18/Mapillary-joins-Facebook.html <comment><USER2> I hope this and Scape are tools for a successor to PhotoSynth. It's really a shame that that dream from 2007-2010 era never materialized. For facebook to be able to turn all its photos of public places into geometry and texture sets, and procedurally create 3D representations of the world at ground level, without street view cars, would be a next big moment in consumer mapping, and a win for Occulus. Textures in particular would look much better being extrapolated and generated vs being overlayed from the photos themselves, and lighting could be something reverse calculated from photos at different times of day. Imagine being able to turn a photo from day to night, based on what you know about said locations actual lighting, and not a generic filter. Those 3D maps would also be handy for AR, being able to sync the geometry of the world up to what facebook expects it to be.

These original two ted talks were spectacular.

[https://www.ted.com/speakers/blaise_aguera_y_arcas](https://www.ted.com/speakers/blaise_aguera_y_arcas)

[https://www.wired.com/2010/11/mining-flickr-to- build-3d-mode...](https://www.wired.com/2010/11/mining-flickr-to- build-3d-models-of-the-world/)

<comment><USER3> This is the future we were/are looking to build with [https://ayvri.com](https://ayvri.com), but you have to start with a compelling use case first. It's great to be able to create a this incredibly cool tech, but what will people do with it? If you look at Google Earth, it's amazing, it's cool, but so many years in, there still is barely a use-case for the amount of $$ pumped into it.

We're fortunate to be profitable, and have users that love what we do today, but it's a long long road to get to where we want to be.

The vision as I was explaining it in my last funding round was to imagine a world where every photo or video you took had infinite zoom and rotation of every photo or video you took.

Mostly that vision resulted in a ton of push-back on how it will never be possible, which is BS based on the progress of computer vision and AI in computer graphics, or "so what".

<comment><USER4> I'm currently using Street View quite a lot to check the surroundings of houses I'm interested in. I think this is something a potential buyer could pay a little for but real estate agents usually do their best to hide the actual location of the house (maybe they fear to be bypassed?)

Other use cases:

I check roads, intersections and landmarks when I'm planning new bicycle rides. Satellite view is also very useful. I do most of the planning on the OSMAnd app and I check some parts on Google.

I check the locations I must go to of they are new to me. This is to know where to go and not lose my way on the last few meters (street numbers sometimes are unhelpful.)

<comment><USER5> I use satellite/aerial for cycling, as it's updated quite frequently and it's reasonably easy to tell apart the bad path (sand/big traffic). The Street View in the less crowded places seems to get one update in 8-10 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Offtopic: For a second I read "Facebook acquires Military" and seemed reasonable from them...

</comment><comment><USER7> "Our commitment to OpenStreetMap stays. "

<comment><USER8> For how long?

<comment><USER9> considering how much money facebook pump into OSM each year, I suspect its for the long run

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "starting today, it will also be free to use for commercial users as well."

</comment><comment><USER10> Well done Peter and Jan. I always thought it would be google or Microsoft, but good job!

<comment><USER11> Mapillary is deeply connected to OpenStreetMap. Google steers clear of OSM- related things in order to protect its own maps offering. There is no way Google would have bought Mapillary out except maybe as an acquihire, and even then, did Mapillary employees have any unique skills that Google hadn't already had in abundance after a decade of Street View development?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Do they offer ucipital imagery?</comment>


The Networked battlefield from a grunt's point of view - <AUTHOR> http://thestandard.com/news/2008/06/25/it-vs-initiative-internet-age-comes-battlefield On a late summer night of 2004 in al Anbar province, Iraq, just south of Abu Ghraib, an observation post of four Marines was shot at briefly from the shadows... <comment><USER2> _"... They depend on their small-unit leaders, who contend with an infinite assortment of situations and variables, to understand the mission, evaluate the circumstances carefully, and exercise initiative in the absence of orders. The military's training has undergone painstaking changes over the past decade to produce exactly this kind of soldier ..."_

What happened to the "Strategic Corporal" vision that was borne from the lessons of Mogadishu? Krulak tried to lower the command level of decision making required in todays complex battleground and called it the "Three block War". From peace keeper to low intensity warfare to full out civil war ~ [http://www.cdi.org/friendlyversion/printversion.cfm?document...](http://www.cdi.org/friendlyversion/printversion.cfm?documentID=1834)

 _"... A strategic corporal is a soldier that possesses technical mastery in the skill of arms while being aware that his judgment, decision-making and action can all have strategic and political consequences that can affect the outcome of a given mission and the reputation of his country ..._ "

Read here how the Aus military is approaching this (pdf, 60Kb) ~ <http://smallwarsjournal.com/documents/liddy.pdf> A measured leadership at the lowest level. A lot like startups.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think he makes a pretty astute observation that relying on technology to solve command problems actually exacerbates the problem.

</comment><comment><USER3> I really want to believe its not just "The Office" with 50 cal. machine guns over there.

This does not instill me with a great deal of confidence in this regard.

</comment><comment><USER4> The author, who was in the Marines for 12 years and served in Iraq, brings up a few very interesting points about how the chain of command and tactics have been impacted by the Internet and electronic devices.</comment>


Gmail for desktop now automatically shows images in your messages - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/12/12/gmail-will-soon-show-images-messages-default/#!pK6mw <comment><AUTHOR> Am I the only one that absolutely does NOT want this? I don't care so much about viruses in images, rather I don't want spammers to see that I loaded a custom image and thus my email address is valid.

(A wonderful side-product of rarely loading images is that most newsletter- type emails are vastly easier to read.)</comment>


Peter Thiel: I'm voting for Trump because - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/peter-thiel-trump-speech-national-press-club-2016-10 <comment><AUTHOR> The topic before was "Should YC disassociate from Thiel from YC?"

The argument from YC was (more or less) "businesses shouldn't let political differences stop people from working together."

Here's my question to the YC community: At what point does the activities of an employee / partner bring potentially unwanted attention to a business?

Yes, I wouldn't fire an employee for having different political opinions from me. BUT I would fire an employee for going around publicly campaigning and publicly donating vast sums of money to a political agenda.

Again, it's about bringing potentially divisive attention to the business - not about political differences.

<comment><USER2> What fraction of YC companies, would you say, depend on, or plan to depend on, a wide cross section of the US population? Go by age, start with high schoolers (pro-Trump, curiously enough) to the elderly, and from coast to coast?

And would you apply this same principle to figures like Sam Altman, and Paul Graham, the latter having been reported to have compared Trump to Stalin?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The thing I like about Thiel is that he recognizes that there exist people outside of the dozen or so bubbles of prosperity, and that they aren't doing so hot, by and large.</comment>


Coinbase Bitcoin Wallet App Gets Axed From iOS App Store - <AUTHOR> http://bitcoinblogger.com/apple-still-afraid-bitcoin-coinbase-bitcoin-wallet-app-gets-axed-ios-app-store/ <comment><USER2> I'm the developer of the of the only Bitcoin wallet client on Windows Phone. It works with both Coinbase and Blockchain.

[http://www.windowsphone.com/en- us/store/app/bitcoin/ca65fc5b...](http://www.windowsphone.com/en- us/store/app/bitcoin/ca65fc5b-14f0-4da4-8e39-e2d4b702b2ea)

The app initially got rejected multiple times, for many different reasons (not related to the quality of the app). My feeling is that they were trying to find excuses not to accept this kind of app. During the first few months, I had to disable the payment function (making the app pretty much useless). Ultimately, I rebuilt the whole app, and integrated it directly with Windows Phone's Wallet (think Passbook). I'm still not sure why, but they accepted it right away.

Perhaps they could use the same approach, and integrate Coinbase with Passbook, giving one more reason for people to use Passbook (which I believe Apple would appreciate)? I'm not quite sure, but it worked for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> I love this idea. I just used Passbook for the first time recently. I got to the airport and my Delta passes were on my home screen. It was great.

I'm thinking an integration with CoinMap, where if you walk into a store that accepts Bitcoin, it shows up on your home screen (if this is possible).

<comment><USER2> > I'm thinking an integration with CoinMap, where if you walk into a store > that accepts Bitcoin, it shows up on your home screen (if this is possible).

That would be awesome actually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Doesn't make sense really. There's two other wallets, blockchain.info's and Coinjar.io's which are still sitting pretty.

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/blockchain/id493253309](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/blockchain/id493253309)

[https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/coinjar-for- iphone/id7252098...](https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/coinjar-for- iphone/id725209873)

More likely they removed it to fix a bug, than it being forcefully taken down.

<comment> coinbase-craig We didn't remove it.

<comment><USER4> Doesn't Apple give you a reason for pulling it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The lack of wallets for iPhone and iPad may be one of Bitcoin's biggest hurdles to mass adoption. Many early adopters use Apple products, but much of Bitcoin's appeal is lost if you can't carry it in your pocket. It's part of what makes Bitcoin cash-like.

Coinbase is already unsatisfying, as far as software wallets go, because you have to register with an email address. Your coins are held in a shared wallet, not on the device. But at least you get the idea of how Bitcoin works on a phone.

On the other hand, Apple didn't explicitly design iOS to be a highly secure environment suitable to store digital money on. A couple months ago, a bug in Android's random number generator was discovered that compromised all key pairs which used it. Android wallets had to issue an update which moved all the bitcoin in each wallet to a new address, generated with the patched RNG. But for a day or two, most Android wallets were vulnerable.

<comment><USER6> As someone fairly new to bitcoin, what is the actual advantage of carrying the wallet in your pocket?

Wouldn't you rather have your wallet stored say on your home PC, but be able to transfer in and out from your mobile device?

<comment><USER7> You need a wallet to make purchases using your phone (i.e. a wallet with its own address to transfer from or to). It's just like carrying cash. I can't transfer cash from home once I'm at the store, I need it right there. So what I do is usually transfer some bitcoin from my "main wallet" to my "phone wallet" when I think I might need it. If there are no wallet's for the iPhone, however (I use Android so I have no idea if this is actually true), then bitcoin on the go is useless to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Afraid of Bitcoin? No. Afraid of regulators? I'd imagine.

</comment><comment><USER9> This isn't new at all: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/06/13/why- apple-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/06/13/why-apple-is- afraid-of-bitcoin/)

It was nice to have the Coinbase app but there was always a risk they were going to pull it. Gliph still works...

<comment><USER10> That entire article is based on a completely wrong premise. From the first paragraph:

> With the introduction of Passbook, Apple has launched mobile payments on iOS > and competing virtual payment systems, including bitcoin, must be > terminated.

Except Passbook _isn 't_ mobile payments on iOS. The article was wrong then, and it's still wrong now. There seems to be no relation at all between Passbook and Bitcoin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm not sure "afraid," is the right word. Perhaps Apple's legal team is just trying to avoid potential run ins with the law?

<comment><USER12> Saying generic-big-organization-or-government is "afraid" of you is a generic tactic to empower your cult-like base into thinking they matter.

It's the "doctors hate this elementary school teacher who discovered one weird trick!" of pet causes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Doesn't Apple require that in-app purchases happen through their system (where they take a cut)? The Coinbase app let you buy Bitcoins with US dollars. Sounds like a TOS violation, not an anti-Bitcoin conspiracy or fear of regulation. Admittedly, I'm not an iOS developer and don't keep up on changes to their developer guidelines, so I don't know if that rule still stands or if it applies here.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know Apple's rule. But I know that PayPal has an iPhone app they describe as "your new digital wallet". Bitcoin is a digital wallet.[1] Does PayPal give Apple a cut for each payment? Somehow I doubt it.

Source: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/paypal/id283646709](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/paypal/id283646709)

<comment><USER14> I don't think that is the case. With the banking app from RBS I can perform bank transfers and even pay money to contacts. Apple surely can't be getting a cut of that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I sure hope Apple can't force an uninstall of apps I've already downloaded and installed... This makes me distrust the auto app update feature of iOS 7.

<comment><USER16> They can, but never have.

<comment><USER17> Source?

<comment><USER18> [http://www.hackthatphone.com/3x/kill_switch.html](http://www.hackthatphone.com/3x/kill_switch.html)

<comment><USER4> :( link rot, the full article seems unviewable [http://www.zdziarski.com/papers/killswitch.html](http://www.zdziarski.com/papers/killswitch.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is very disappointing. It's their house and you have to play by their rules I guess. This is why I have to keep diversifying where I acquire content from these ecosystems.

Hats off to the guys at Coinbase. I really like their approach to Bitcoin so far.

</comment><comment><USER20> And this is why Apple has lost its way.

I doubt Steve Jobs would have allowed the situation to be handled so badly.

Then again I may be wrong. The concept of an app store is great for having all the apps in one place but it's prone to abuse when run by a company.

There shouldn't be any reason other quality, viruses or spyware to reject an app.

Refusing an app because its in competition with your product is anti- competitive and should be illegal.

<comment><USER21> Excuse me?

This exact behavior happened all the time when Steve Jobs ran Apple. Remember Google Voice, or the countless other apps that Apple banned from the walled garden for whatever reason?

If anything, this is evidence that Apple _hasn 't_ changed.

<comment><USER22> Not to mention refusing an app, then ripping off the idea:

[http://www.dailytech.com/Apple+Accused+of+Ripping+Off+Develo...](http://www.dailytech.com/Apple+Accused+of+Ripping+Off+Developers+Rejected+WiFi+Sync+App/article21871.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why people still trust all these cloud wallets? Can't they be hacked/hack oneself some day?

<comment><USER24> Anything can be hacked, but sometimes it's good to have money on hand to pay bar tabs with. Can't do that with my buried-in-the-ground wallet.

<comment><USER25> There are alternatives that don't require centralized VC funded startups to act as banks for these cases. One would be: Having a mini wallet on paper (QR code for easy handling) and paying from that in your bar.

<comment><USER26> How can you have a paper wallet to _make_ transactions? That would require the wallet to expose its private key to the recipient so they could generate a transaction. That means the wallet is compromised on first use. Paper wallets really only make sense for two things: carrying an address that others can send payments to; carrying the private key so that you can transfer the _full_ amount into some other address.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> What happens to an app when Apple pulls it from the store? The app remains on the devices that already downloaded it -- does this just prevent anyone from getting updates and any new users from downloading the coinbase app?

<comment><USER28> Apple can do both. Either remain (without updates or new users) or remote uninstall on every device (generally used for malware).

<comment><USER29> > or remote uninstall on every device (generally used for malware)

Has Apple ever done this or said they could?

Technically, it would obviously be possible, but I don't remember Apple doing it.

My understanding is that when an app is pulled, it's usually still available for download if you had already bought it; but they have removed even that ability in a few cases.

<comment><USER3> There certainly is a kill switch, but as far as I know it's never been used.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Curious question. If you deploy a wallet app trough an app-store (such as iOS appstore or google play), people send coins to that wallet and then the app- store pulls the app, which will also delete the app from the users device, the coins are gone no?

I'm assuming that Apple or Google won't take responsibility for the wanton destruction of your property.

So maybe deploying wallet apps on devices where you don't control when your wallet gets nuked isn't such a great idea.

<comment><USER31> I'm pretty sure Apple removing an app from the store has no effect on installations already on people's devices.

This may have changed with iOS 7's auto updates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Time to axe the iOS app store. Time for new open platforms.

</comment><comment><USER33> If the keys are stored at Coinbase and the app is just using APIs to talk back to the site, is there anything the app was doing that couldn't be replicated through a mobile website?

</comment><comment><USER34> "Owner of closed, proprietary walled-garden chooses to exclude yet another app based on their own inscrutable decision making process."

How is this news?

</comment><comment><USER35> Well, I guess they can focus on integrating Litecoin into their system now...

</comment><comment><USER36> There's still the Blockchain wallet app.

</comment><comment><USER37> Adding to the speculation: Could apple be protecting it's business model? A bitcoin transaction can be a means of purchasing in an app without the 30% cut.

</comment><comment><USER38> They are not afraid of bitcoin or anything like that. They just don't like bad apps. sorry.

<comment><USER39> That's just false. Apple rejects things without reason just 'cause. Quality is the catch all they use to reject apps arbitrarily.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I display my work if it's hidden? - <AUTHOR>

Most of my time is spent developing for my job (small startup). And like most businesses, we keep our repositories secret, with access only for employees. Is the only way to showcase my skills my resume and open source work? <comment><USER2> Two thoughts -

1\. Unfortunately, you are choosing to work somewhere where your work is "kept secret". In other companies, this might not be the case. You should consider this and how it may or may not affect your future job opportunities.

2\. Is it possible to take chunks of your code and "scrub" them so they are not revealing anything proprietary by sharing? (still need permission of course) I do this on the business/prototyping side a lot, not sure if it transfers to the development side.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. I mean, in my experience, most shops don't want to expose their code to the world, but this may/may not be generally true.

2\. Yeah, I think this is the way I would go about, but I was just wondering if there was any way I could go about it without just throwing random chunks of code here and there on my Github.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Save hours of Googling - student loan hacks CHRONICLED - <AUTHOR> http://www.studentloancheatsheet.com/

<comment><USER2> Hang on, a cheat sheet to not paying your student loans? Didn't you (we!) sign up for those loans and agree to pay them? Aren't they our responsibility? This feels like a complete cop-out. The "secret" to getting out of debt is hard work and living on a budget. This is gross.

see: [http://www.daveramsey.com/show/home/?snid=show](http://www.daveramsey.com/show/home/?snid=show)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Aaron, you're right - clarification is necessary here. This is not a resource for ducking financial responsibility, but rather for capitalizing on existing assistance programs. Many people are not aware that their job, community service efforts, or income level (just a few examples) qualifies them for much needed aid. The same way we should be educated on tax deductions, I believe everyone should understand their options for easing the burden of student loan debt.

Big Dave Ramsey fan, thanks for the comment!</comment></comment>


Why we should build human-level artificial intelligence - <AUTHOR> https://www.techrepublic.com/article/why-we-should-build-human-level-artificial-intelligence/ <comment><AUTHOR> I don't know what to think about this. Do we really need an AI with human- level of intelligence? I don't doubt that AI helps make our jobs easier, but should we really build an AGI just because we can? What do you guys think?</comment>


Cairo Mural Spanning 50 Buildings Is Only Fully Visible from One Spot - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2016/04/epic-mural-spanning-50-buildings-fully-visible-one-spot/ <comment><USER2> Very frustrating video, would it be too much to ask for just a still photo!

<comment><USER3> Seriously! The video even cuts out before it gets to the actual "sweet spot".. this basically couldn't get any worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wired imagines itself as a magazine for tech-savvy people, but frowns on ad blockers?

</comment><comment><USER5> Who edited that video? It literally stops/fades out the moment it gets to the point where you're supposed to look at the mural from.

Then it starts talking about the history of the oculus rift? Come on now.</comment>


Ask HN:iPad and chrome-os might be disruptive, how can Microsoft react? - <AUTHOR>

If we assume iPad, tables, chrome-os computers would find a crowd among non-techies. How can microsoft react to this ? <comment><AUTHOR> Microsoft should built some controlled version of it's os, using applications verified for safety , speed.

And then use those applications to conquer many vertical markets for the non- techies crowd.

for example: Microsoft should built some platform using mathematica or similar software to sell interactive educational math books. With right way of selling it to colleges this could work very well.</comment>


New Python Podcast - <AUTHOR> http://podcastinit.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Full disclosure: I am one of the hosts of this podcast.

I have been having a lot of fun making this podcast and we have some really great episodes lined up. For anyone who uses or is interested in Python and the broader ecosystem around it, I suggest subscribing to our feed.

I'm happy to answer any questions and suggestions/commments are welcome!</comment>