XXY Oscilloscope - <AUTHOR> https://dood.al/oscilloscope/ <comment><USER2> This needs some samples

      https://dood.al/oscilloscope/#-0.05,-0.8,0,0,0,0,0.0,3,1,sin(a*t-t/5)*cos(a*t/b)*cos((a+b)*t),sin(a*t+(t/11))*cos(t*t/(b*a)),3,5,0,0.74,125,0,0,0

      https://dood.al/oscilloscope/#-0.05,-0.8,1,0,0,0,0.0,3,1,sin(22*a*t-t/15)*cos(a*t+t/12+t/30),sin(a*t+t)*cos(t/a+t/3),2,5,0,0.74,125,0.07,0,0

<comment><USER3> Here's the music and oscilloscope art demo, the artistic goal of the project ... [https://m1el.github.io/woscope/](https://m1el.github.io/woscope/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Try this one: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtR63-ecUNo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtR63-ecUNo)

`youtube-dl -x "[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtR63-ecUNo"`](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtR63-ecUNo"`)

</comment><comment><USER5> An hour ago and on the front page with no comments. Probably because we are all still playing with it.

<comment><USER6> This :P

<comment><USER6> Way to spoil the lighthearted mood of a fun oscilloscope simulation... I've noticed, and dislike how unwelcome it is to make a simple acknowledgement or agreement on HN. Must be something about the voting system.

<comment><USER7> It's because it doesn't really contribute anything, and some people are stricter about that than others. The easiest way to turn that simple acknowledgement with downvotes into a neutral or upvoted comment is to just add a simple sentence with your own thoughts, or what it reminds you of, or anything that actually justifies the use of a comment instead of just the upvote button.

It's just one of the ways HN is slightly different than other forums, and while it sometimes comes across as negative, I think overall it encourages better comments.

<comment><USER6> I can sort of understand the "this is not a chat room" attitude only leave constructive comments or whatever. But sometimes you want to just leave something more than a button click because there was more resonance than is expressed in a binary "yes", yet you don't necessarily have anything insightful to add.

Anyway... that is my opinion, but I expect it's unpopular and will not be surprised if more downvotes come hurtling my way.

<comment><USER7> I think the disconnect is believing it has to be insightful. There's a large area there where you can work within to make a comment more signal than noise. Just explaining why you agree is usually sufficient.

Some forums are perfectly fine without a distinction of contribution, such as reddit. Others, such as here, have a culture that tries to promote more substantive comments. Neither is better than the other, but both excel at specific things. If I want reddit style comments (and I do, often), I'll visit reddit. If I want HN style comments, I visit HN. Forcing redditors to be more serious or HN users to be less serious doesnt serve either community well, and would likely cause both to be similar and mediocre compared to what they were before.

The whole point is that this is a place where someone can dive deep on the differences in etiquette and culture between reddit and HN and not worry too much about being called out for being too serious or cramping other people's good time, because some people find a discussion like that a good time even if they also like 10+ comment chains of jokes and crowd sourced movie quotes at other times.

For that reason, I don't really expect you to get downvoted. You explained and justified your position, which I find is usually all most people here really expect as a minimum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very nice and realistic effect. As a low-level electronics hobbyist I was pleasantly surprised to find "entry level" 50 MHz digital oscilloscopes in the $150-$200 range these days. I picked up a Siglent to help me through Horowitz & Hill's The Art of Electronics labs and it's been pretty fun. I also have used it just to see what's going on on a cheap digital level I bought with USB output and some other things. Definitely a neat tool. It does sit on the desk more than I'd like these days though.

</comment><comment><USER9> I made this oscilloscope simulation + sound last year : [https://www.shadertoy.com/view/ldSfWV](https://www.shadertoy.com/view/ldSfWV)

Beware : you need a good GPU

<comment><USER10> Nice reflection on the monitors edges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For those of you a bit lost with the initial setup, click the "sweep" and "microphone" checkboxes to get something more familiar.

<comment><USER11> And try whistling, snapping your fingers, and growling and humming, not just speech.

Most people can whistle a nearly perfect sine wave, and shortly thereafter you'll see what frequency and volume really mean.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The obvious musical selection to use in conjunction with this is "YYZ"

EDIT: Okay, I'm watching / listening to Dave Holland's "Jugglers Parade" which is punchy and whose dynamic range builds slowly. It's pretty freaking cool. I'm sure everyone here has musical favorites that they're having fun with too.

</comment><comment><USER13> Love the visuals, is the source code open? A nitpick, I should be able to click on "microphone" instead of having to aim at the small checkbox, this is easy if you wrap it in an HTML label tag.

<comment><USER14> source code: [https://github.com/m1el/woscope/](https://github.com/m1el/woscope/)

<comment><USER15> The repo was only the source for the line drawing code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> related: [https://www.reddit.com/r/oscilloscopemusic/](https://www.reddit.com/r/oscilloscopemusic/)

<comment><USER17> Down the rabbit hole: [https://oscilloscopemusic.com](https://oscilloscopemusic.com)

Vinyl "music for oscilloscopes"....

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Awesome, my whole family played with it for 15 minutes, a great way to introduce wave theory to 8-10 years-olds! Works great on Windows 10 + Chrome.

<comment><USER19> Seeing an oscilloscope displaying a Lissajous pattern when I was eight years old was one of the things that sparked my interest in electronics. In 1962, by cracky!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> awesome! would be nice if the engine interperlated between parameter changes instead of getting those abrupt digital steps.

>To get audio from another program, you can either physically connect your audio output to your audio input, or use third party software, such as VB- CABLE on Windows or Soundflower with SoundflowerBed on MacOS.

Read my mind

</comment><comment><USER21> I can't get it to display anything. The console is ablaze with CORS errors. Firefox 58, Fedora 27.

</comment><comment><USER22> try it with [https://github.com/m1el/woscope- music/blob/master/oscillofun...](https://github.com/m1el/woscope- music/blob/master/oscillofun.mp3)

</comment><comment><USER23> I tried playing some of Jerobeam Fenderson's music on it and it works great! :D

</comment><comment><USER15> Reminds me of the Scan Processor Studies by Woody Vasulka & Brian O'Reilly. [https://vimeo.com/7517418](https://vimeo.com/7517418)

Really eerie stuff.

</comment><comment><USER24> Acid test: run Youscope on it. Seems to work relatively well.

</comment><comment><USER25>
      https://dood.al/oscilloscope/#-1,-1.2,0,0,1,1,0.13,7,1,sin(2*PI*a*t)*cos(2*PI*b*t),cos(2*PI*a*t)*cos(2*PI*b*t),2,0.5,1,0.72,111,0,0,0

</comment><comment><USER17> Wow, very cool. Kind of an inverse oscilloscope though — you adjust the input freq not the display freq.

</comment><comment><USER26> >Unavailable in Safari. Only stereo in Chrome.

It IS available in Safari, but not stereo as it says. Sierra.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is amazing! Turn on your microphone and try playing with the sliders!

</comment><comment><USER28> I don't see any visualization, on Mac 10.3.2 and Chrome 66.

<comment><USER29> Click on 'Signal generator'?

<comment><USER28> I hit "Reset All" and it started working :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> the-dude Completely locked up my FF + iMac.

<comment><USER30> No problem here on FF 58.0.1 and OS X 10.13.2</comment></comment>


Positive thinking can be dangerous - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/10/11/enough_with_the_bright_side/?page=full <comment><USER2> But it is not more dangerous than fatalism, the flip side of that coin.

Best to stay somewhere in the middle, be aware of reality, try your best to improve the situation and don't berate yourself too much if it doesn't work, pick up the pieces, learn and try again.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am reminded of the popularity of sanatoriums back when there was no treatment for TB. There was no evidence that they actually cured people, but they made TB sufferers less visible and easier to take care of.

Similarly people who have been convinced to act happy may have problems that are just as big, but they are more pleasant to be around.

There are real benefits to positive thinking. However cancer survival doesn't seem to be among them. (Citation: [http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/22/health/webmd/main3...](http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/22/health/webmd/main3393759.shtml)) And certainly when someone loses their job in a bad economy, it is downright dangerous to push a message that can be misread as, "It's your fault for being unhappy about it."

There is a balance to be reached. And our society is far too far off on the "la la, be happy" end. (Disclaimer: I am a person who is naturally inclined to be happy most of the time.)

</comment><comment><USER4> "Optimists may accomplish more than realists, realists certainly accomplish more than pessimists, but optimists do many times as much damage. For example, nearly all "revolutionaries" and criminals are optimists. Lenin, Hitler, Sadam Hussein, Bernie Madoff, and probably all con-men and burglars were extremely optimistic. The conviction that they will never be caught is nearly universal among criminals. Many, perhaps most, excessive risk takers are optimists." From my blog, back in March, [http://williambswift.blogspot.com/2009/03/optimism-is-not- ne...](http://williambswift.blogspot.com/2009/03/optimism-is-not-necessarily- as.html) , it is something that has annoyed me for years.

Before someone starts throwing around "Godwin's Law", you should actually go and read a bit about Hitler's life, a serious optimism is one thing that comes across very strongly, from early on, through WWI and his time as a pretty revolutionary, to his decisions in WWII.

</comment><comment><USER5> Positive thinking is like believing in a Loving God. Neither will provide you material richness, but they might provide some motivation. However everything taken ideologically, be that politics, religion, science, is dangerous.</comment>


Search Engine that Plants Trees - <AUTHOR> http://www.ecosia.org/

<comment><USER2> Wow, this looks like a very noble effort. If they can offer privacy like DDG does, this will replace my default search engine. And the results seem decent too.</comment>


Graphic: A Flutter Data Visualization Library Base on Grammar of Graphics - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@entronad/graphic-a-flutter-data-visualization-library-base-on-grammar-of-graphics-75ca751f5cae <comment><AUTHOR> In this article we introduced a Flutter data visualization library based on Grammar of Graphics: Grapphic</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a camera that is aligned with a screen? - <AUTHOR> I was watching a YouTube video[1] where Trevor Noah, as a random aside about 42 seconds in, says something I thought was a great idea: a web camera that aligns with your screen, so that when you're video conferencing, you can look at the person you're talking to, and on the other end it looks like you're looking them in the eye.
I think this would make a big difference in people's lives, as eye contact is a pretty psychologically important way to connect with other human beings.
Does this already exist? Is anyone working on this?
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OC4CIfZ_1A <comment><USER2> I don't think that's optically possible without either a teleprompter or a "punch-hole" display. "Teleprompter" sounds sophisticated but basically a pepper's ghost box for cameras, there are plenty of amateur YouTubers building it "in zero dollars from home waste" manners. Half-silvered glass or polarized filter is nice but not necessary from what I understand.

Somewhat tangentially, what I find from sudden rise in stay-home teleconferencing is that TV hosts as well as corporate teleconferencing users are almost completely clueless about teleconferencing compared to YouTubers and streamers, people think a superwide Logitech webcam and a laptop on your lap in a bathroom is all it takes. YouTubers run Sony Alphas all day with nice primes, some even REDs ARRIs, large dia condenser mics, Shure is entry- midrange there ... So a lot is there to learn from them, especially on budget.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, there's multiple ways of doing it. DIY-Perks has a webcam mod[0] using 2-way mirror.

The other way is using a microLED display. A microLED is so compact/bright that you can leave spaces between elements and can be 50% transparent or more looking from behind. Alternatively Optical/sensor elements could be interspersed with the microLED elements giving as good an image quality as can be achieved based on the area used.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AecAXinars](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AecAXinars)

</comment><comment><USER4> The old Microsoft Surface 2, renamed later PixelSense when the Microsoft marketing department decided to launch a new product with the exact same name than an existing product, had a display which was an infrared camera. Each pixel was also an infrared light sensor.</comment>


Git 2.13 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/2360-git-2-13-has-been-released <comment><USER2> Hidden in the notes at the bottom is a pretty useful improvement to 'git stash':

> 'git stash save' now accepts pathspecs. You can use this to create a stash > of part of your working tree, which is handy when picking apart changes to > turn into clean commits.

I believe there may be a slight error in the GitHub blog post I quoted above: from what I can tell, it's actually the 'git stash push' command that now accepts pathspecs. But either way, still a neat new feature!

<comment><USER3> It's worth noting that "git stash -p" (aka "git stash --patch") already exists and allows you to commit individual files or hunks within a file. Though the cost is going through an interactive interface, so some users might prefer the new "git stash push". Still, if you can't upgrade, use "git stash -p".

<comment><USER4> Patch and interactive modes are the best thing next to sliced bread. I'll start with a feature and end up refactoring something and it's difficult to organize large sets of changes without them.

<comment><USER5> They're definitely prereqs to upper-level git wizardry

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Oh I am really digging the change to allow directory level configs for config settings.

I have commited with my work credentials to open source projects more times than I can count

<comment><USER7> Not uncommon! This is why .gitignore is the first thing I explain to git newcomers.

<comment><USER8> I think you misread the parent comment. They didn't say "committed my work credentials", it was "committed _with_ my work credentials". As in they have two different identities and used the wrong one when committing a change, so the commit author was incorrect.

Being able to set configs per directory provides a workaround.

<comment><USER7> Yeah I totally misread that...

Nevertheless, .gitignore should still be the first thing you learn about git :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > git branch, git tag, and git for-each-ref all learned the --no-contains > option to match their existing --contains option. This can let you ask which > tags or branches don't have a particular bug (or bugfix).

I'm surprised that didn't exist already. Several years ago, I worked on a tool to scan SVN merge history and save in a graph database so one could ask this type of question, "Does this branch contain the fix?". Or the opposite, "Which branches do not contain this fix?".

It was a mess because there were 8 million commits in the repo and clients ranged from SVN 1.4 to SVN 1.8 (the server was upgraded too).

It would have made more sense to use git for something like that but it's hard to get thousands of devs to switch.

<comment><USER10> I implemented that feature in the 2.13 release, glad to see interest in it, more details on how it works & can be used from the commit message[1]:

This allows for finding the last-good rollout tag given a known-bad <commit>. Given a hypothetically bad commit cf5c725, the git version to revert to can be found with this hacky two-liner:

        (git tag -l 'v[0-9]*'; git tag -l --contains cf5c725 'v[0-9]*') |
            sort | uniq -c | grep -E '^ *1 ' | awk '{print $2}' | tail -n 10

With this new --no-contains option the same can be achieved with:

        git tag -l --no-contains cf5c725 'v[0-9]*' | sort | tail -n 10

As the filtering machinery is shared between the tag, branch & for-each-ref commands, implement this for those commands too. A practical use for this with "branch" is e.g. finding branches which were branched off between v2.8.0 and v2.10.0:

        git branch --contains v2.8.0 --no-contains v2.10.0

1\. [https://github.com/git/git/commit/ac3f5a346860b824e083c5d305...](https://github.com/git/git/commit/ac3f5a346860b824e083c5d305757c3260565475)

<comment><USER9> Very cool! Thanks for the examples and linking back to the commit :+1:

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Anyone know what has happened to the OSX builds? The de-facto project 'git- osx-installer' doesn't have binaries after 2.10

[https://sourceforge.net/projects/git-osx- installer/files/?so...](https://sourceforge.net/projects/git-osx- installer/files/?source=navbar)

git-scm.com says:

"You are downloading version 2.10.1 of Git for the Mac platform. This is the most recent maintained build for this platform. It was released 7 months ago, on 2016-10-14."

[https://git-scm.com/download/mac](https://git-scm.com/download/mac)

<comment><USER12> Probably homebrew. `brew install git --HEAD` gives v2.12.0, and I'm apparently using v2.11.0. It installs bash and zsh completions too, which are nice.

<comment><USER13> Not everyone wants to use that travesty of a "package manager".

The person you replied to was asking specifically about the native macos packages linked from the git official website.

<comment><USER12> I only meant that Homebrew is so popular that I wouldn't be surprised if it was the reason why the OS X builds on the official website fell into disrepair.

<comment><USER13> I see. Thats frankly a poor state of affairs if it's the case.

The linked builds from git-scm.com are built by [https://github.com/timcharper/git_osx_installer](https://github.com/timcharper/git_osx_installer) (but hosted on sourceforge for some bizarre reason), however that repo seems a little inactive lately, bar issues from users.

Another thing to love about Mercurial: the project handles packaging, rather than relying on third parties to do their job for them: [https://www.mercurial-scm.org/downloads](https://www.mercurial- scm.org/downloads)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The "includeIf" thing based on filesystem paths for setting the user.email gitconfig seems useful!

</comment><comment><USER15> On git moving away from SHA1: it's about time.

\- There shouldn't be too many nor too few hash algos. Too many: paradox of choice, user confusion and interop overhead. Too few: security monoculture risks being broken by well-funded state actors

\- Sane, future-ready default: SHA3-512

Also, git GPG signing should change to signing content, in addition to or instead of, hashes.

<comment><USER16> Isn't signing a hash the standard procedure for signatures?

<comment><USER17> The thing is, you are signing hash of a hash of data instead of simply hash of data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Release notes:

[https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git/tree/Documentatio...](https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git/tree/Documentation/RelNotes/2.13.0.txt)

</comment><comment><USER19> Anyone know where to get _clean_ git builds for Windows without any extra crap like the "git for Windows" builds have?

\- Windows comes with bash

\- Microsoft have an excellent openssh implementation on their github

\- I don't want some dude's cool $PS1 and shortcuts and icons.

I just want git.

<comment><USER20> > Windows comes with bash

That's an extremely charitable way of phrasing it. 64-bit Windows 10 in developer mode has bash as an optionally installable component. AFAIK, bash is not installed by default and it's unavailable on 32-bit or in older Windows versions.

If you want to allow a wide range of users, including those with corporate- or government-IT issued machines, to run your build, you need to support older Windows versions down to at least 7. Which means that you cannot assume native bash.

<comment><USER19> Nobody is discussing assuming anything. It's simply preferable to have optional components for legacy systems than to add a second copy of bash and ssh to every machine.

<comment><USER20> It is certainly preferable to you and others in a similar situation. It is, I suspect, somewhat less preferable to git maintainers, who would need to build and test an additional binary package using a different toolchain for every release, and deal with bug reports from confused users mixing up git-with-bash and git-without-bash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Not related to this but please github choose a better font to render code in android browsers, the current one's unreadable!

<comment><USER22> I thought GitHub used system fonts?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12075623](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12075623)

<comment><USER23> They try, but there is not really predictable and simple way to select those fonts in CSS. I've had times when Courier was used on Linux because the MS fonts we installed.

I would prefer they just do font-family: monospace</comment></comment></comment>


GuessTor: Brute-forces .onion domains - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dlion/guessTor <comment><USER2> There are 2^80 possible onion domains and only ~10,000 are currently used. Simply brute-forcing the entire namespace isn't effective, especially because the verification step is a web service that has to try and fetch an onion service descriptor to see if it's online.

Also, onion domains are Base32-encoded, which means that they aren't case sensitive and they don't use the digits 0, 1, 8, and 9.

<comment><USER3> I love onions tho

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Scallion ([https://github.com/lachesis/scallion](https://github.com/lachesis/scallion)) works really good for this. It uses OpenCL to leverage your GPU's to make cracking really fast.

</comment><comment><USER5> Better to run an HSDir! [http://www.ieee- security.org/TC/SP2013/papers/4977a080.pdf](http://www.ieee- security.org/TC/SP2013/papers/4977a080.pdf)</comment>


Ask HN: How can I make some side money? - <AUTHOR>

Here is my situation: I am living in San Francisco at the moment while being a student at App Academy (www.appacademy.io -- a Rails boot camp). In a little under a month I will have graduated and I will be in need of a job, but my financial resources will be thoroughly depleted and I will most likely have to move back to Florida where I can live rent-free for a short time while I look for a job.
It would be easier to find a job in San Francisco if I were already here, so I would love to know what I can do to make enough side money to make staying here in SF an option. Also, if you are hiring junior engineers (Rails or otherwise), we should talk. ;)
For anyone who is curious, here is my GitHub account: https://github.com/jmsbrwr. My email can also be found in my profile. <comment><USER2> You could drive for Sidecar or Lyft. From what I've heard, it works pretty well for networking too.

<comment><AUTHOR> That thought has crossed my mind, but then I realized that my car is in Florida. Also, I'm 20, so I don't think I would be able to anyways.</comment></comment>


Zuckerberg slams Twitter as Trump plans to sign executive order on social media - <AUTHOR> https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/trump-to-sign-executive-order-on-social-media-on-thursday-white-house-20200528-p54x6s.html <comment><USER2> First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out - Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out - Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me</comment>


Overpopulation Is Not the Problem - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/14/opinion/overpopulation-is-not-the-problem.html <comment><USER2> Good to hear that I'm not the only one with this opinion. While I'm all for keeping resource-consumption in check and keeping sustainability in mind, I don't like what people say about overpopulatiion.

Sometimes I would hear people hoping that population numbers would decrease by natural catastrophies or diseases. Or they caution the expansion of health services in Africa "because it would make the problems worse".

<comment><USER3> The reality is that the best way to control population expansion is by bringing good healthcare to a region. People in the third world have huge families for a number of reasons - a few of them include the reality that:

1) Many children will die young, so in order to have at least a few that survive they need to have a large number of them

2) They have no form of birth control available available to them, so even if they wanted to they could not control the population

To go along with this, in societies that lack a social safety net / old age pensions, your children are your retirement fund, so you tend to have many of them.

It's a multi-faceted problem, but there are humane, concrete solutions that don't involve acts of god.

<comment><USER4> No that is the problem right there. The advent of good(pretty good for a 3rd world country) health care in India ensured explosive growth of population. The only humane way to control population is extensive education of the masses,strongly backed by government(military can be engaged, if required) It means breaking away from religious factions and beliefs. It is impossible in India where minority politics is very important and in an Islamic country like Bangladesh it would be difficult.

<comment><USER5> > The only humane way to control population is extensive education of the > masses ...

Absolutely true, but for one thing. If we educate the masses, we will reduce the average fertility along with doing a lot of general good. Who could argue against that?

But natural selection does perverse things with our best-laid plans. If we educate the masses, natural selection will efficiently select those who weren't educated, or who weren't educated very well, and within 100 years, those people will represent the entire human population.

Those who doubt this scenario need only study the spread of MRSA, in spite of many well-educated people fighting the good fight:

[http://mrsa-research-center.bsd.uchicago.edu/timeline.html](http://mrsa- research-center.bsd.uchicago.edu/timeline.html)

Quote 1: "1960-1967: nfrequent hospital outbreaks of MRSA in Western Europe and Australia - See more at: [http://mrsa-research- center.bsd.uchicago.edu/timeline.html#s...](http://mrsa-research- center.bsd.uchicago.edu/timeline.html#sthash.bCnuu7BG.dpuf")

Quote 2: "2012: Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology-published study showed MRSA infections doubled at academic medical centers in the U.S. between 2003 and 2008. Hospitalizations increased from about 21 out of every 1,000 patients hospitalized in 2003 to about 42 out of every 1,000 in 2008, or almost 1 in 20 patients."

We fought and lost that battle, in the midst of the most advanced society that has ever existed, with a full armament of scientific methods and knowledge. And we didn't have to honor the tastes and individual rights of the organisms we were fighting -- we could be ruthless and warlike. We lost anyway.

Now, because of MRSA, to visit a doctor exposes you to a greater risk than ... well, than most reasons to visit a doctor.

<comment><USER4> so we are in a fix (in other words ooh! poops).any study or effort to beat nature from selecting stupidity?. I used to joke about natural selection as "survival of the dumbest"(I used to be a creationist nut, back in freshman days) I guess "dumb is the new fit!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The problem with this thinking is a failure to realize that we are already taxing the Earth far beyond its carrying capacity. To continue supporting even our current population will force us to devastate our planet to the point that we won't recognize it in 50-100 years. What's the point of supporting more people if we bring them into a miserable world?

Certainly we COULD continue developing innovations that harness and shape the natural world to support continued human population growth... but that line of thinking doesn't give room to consider whether we SHOULD do that.

Should population growth be a goal? What about raising the standard of living of all those who are already on the planet - helping them move from mere sustenance to abundance, and the opportunity to explore the true wonders life has to offer?

Should we live in a world void of natural beauty? I don't think it's a fair trade to have a few more billion people on the planet if everyone then has to read about how beautiful the Earth was before we poisoned the seas, melted the ice caps and drained the soil of its nutrients.

We are at a point now where we as a Human race can and should be thinking about our population growth responsibly. To suggest that we COULD adapt to a future world taxed by overpopulation doesn't imply that we SHOULD follow that path.

<comment><USER6> _we are already taxing the Earth far beyond its carrying capacity_

And your evidence for this is?

 _To continue supporting even our current population will force us to devastate our planet_

And your evidence for this is?

 _What about raising the standard of living of all those who are already on the planet_

As the article clearly states, the obstacles to doing this are social and political, not environmental or technological. People are starving or living at bare subsistence level, to put it bluntly, because our social systems suck at empowering people to make a better life. We allow predatory individuals, whether they are tinpot dictators or investment bankers, to siphon off resources they don't need and will squander anyway at the expense of others. _That_ is what we need to fix.

 _Should we live in a world void of natural beauty?_

No, and we don't.

 _before we poisoned the seas, melted the ice caps and drained the soil of its nutrients._

And your evidence that this is happening is? More precisely, your evidence that all these things are worse than they were, say, 1000 years ago, is?

<comment><USER3> You can form your own opinions about global warming, rising ocean levels, the acidification of the seas, the destruction of our rain forests or the unsustainable nature of our carbon based economy (see peak oil). I don't have time to reference the multitude of articles on the subject, but they're abundantly available... there's this great site called Google.com which can help you with that.

Regarding the issue of 'natural beauty' in the world, I see it on a micro- level when I go to a lake in the summer that was once pristine but is now overrun with seaweed due to Nitrogen runoff from farmer fields. I see it on a macro level when I read about things my children's generation might never enjoy, like the beauty of a coral reef.

At the end of the day with so much 'pseudo science' thrown around from fringe scientists, all anyone has is an 'opinion'. You now have mine.

<comment><USER6> _At the end of the day with so much 'pseudo science' thrown around from fringe scientists, all anyone has is an 'opinion'._

That was kind of my point, except that you and I would probably have different opinions on which particular arguments about these issues come under the heading of "pseudo science".

Also, you are basically saying that we don't know enough about these issues to make useful predictions about the future. At least, if that's what you were saying, I agree with you. But your post was full of predictions about the future; saying that they're "opinions" doesn't give them any more weight. If you don't know what's going to happen, the correct thing to say is that you don't know--and to base your actions on understanding your lack of knowledge, not opinions that have no useful value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What a ridiculous article. Not because it doesn't make some reasonable points, but because it assumes these points are so unique and unknown. Doesn't everyone hear the classic Malthus-versus-technological-advancement argument in highschool? I certainly did multiple times.

I mean, it's more-or-less the basis for all Sci-Fi: stories fall under either A) rich-get-richer and pending disaster as the Earth is overburdened, B) technology makes everything wonderful, C) Humans explicity inhibit their population, or D) humans find new land on other planets (usually also coupled with A,B, or C or Earth)). This isn't some debate that hasn't happened. This isn't some revelation that one comes to as an ecologist, this is an often- rehashed discussion. A worthy discussion, certainly, with points on both sides. But not one which the author has just now discovered a barely-known side of.

Now if the author had done some serious research and presented actual evidence for his side, I'd be all ears. Too bad there wasn't anything new in the article.

</comment><comment><USER8> > Our predecessors in the genus Homo used social hunting strategies [...] to > extract more sustenance from landscapes than would otherwise be possible.

Social hunting strategies don't disprove the Earth having a "carrying capacity." You're not farming the animals that you hunt; they are part of the natural environment.

</comment><comment><USER9> "Who knows what will be possible with the technologies of the future? "

This entire argument is based on the idea that we should be able to continually expand carrying capacity by our inventiveness. Stating for example increased farming yield with technology.

Not only is there a likely limit to our ability to squeeze more and more out of finite resources, but the author completely ignores the subtle long term damage that our technology creates. Our current food production systems are highly toxic to the environment and are a major source of CO2 output. So while we increased food carrying capacity we did so by reducing long term habitability of the planet.

Personally, I'd like to see populatin growth reduced by a global increase in quality of live. But not western culture consumption obsessed quality of life. That would need to change. As would the growth based financial system. Those two go hand in hand so this could all gradually happen at the same time. In theory.

<comment><USER10> In what possible way can freeing fossilized carbon back (where it came from) into the carbon cycle "reduce long term habitability of the planet"?. It may make it awkward for some low lying cities in the short term, but long term it guarantees a warmer, moister, more bountiful planet if anything.

<comment><USER11> In what way does it guarantee a more "bountiful planet" other than more extreme weather?

<comment><USER10> Basic biology? Are you seriously asking or just being obtuse? Do you know what the world looked like the last time we had 1000+ ppm CO2? Teeming with plant life. C3 plants were facing extinction if CO2 levels dropped any further than they had, we've done the biosphere a huge favour by digging it up and putting it back in the air where it came from. Maybe we haven't done _humans_ a favour, but that's a different conversation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This strikes me as a rare case in which the article itself contains (the academic equivalent of) middlebrow dismissal.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think they're looking over the social aspect of this. Areas with highest birthrates tend to be the most uneducated ones, and thus you will have a greater amount of people who will more likely make irresponsible decisions for the planet's sustainability. Look at how many people still don't believe in global warming, and how fiercely they're opposed to the government taking initiatives to solve these problems. Look at a list of countries by population growth rate, and look at a list of countries by how much they recycle -- you'll see a compelling correlation.

<comment><USER5> Anyone who think the problems caused by overpopulation are limited to the uneducated, is himself uneducated. It's a classic case of self-reference.

<comment><USER14> Its a projection of Malthusian ethics: "Humans are stupid".

Actually the point of this article is: "Evidence suggests that despite what we think: Humans are smart".

<comment><USER5> > Actually the point of this article is: "Evidence suggests that despite what > we think: Humans are smart".

Yes, and ironically enough, the article represents a glaring counterexample of its own thesis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The way I see is that technology goes with the money. The demographic boom is happening mostly in the third world which company will invest in technology to make resources available to all the people? and these countries that are facing the challenge of an increasing population will exploit the resources that they have too fast? that's what append in Easter Island: the population cut all the trees and they disappeared from the face of the heart.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think we are seeing evolution and natural selection in action right in front of our eyes here. Nature produces stupid people like this are in influential position and most of our species has this mentality and we will reach a point where it is truly unsustainable and nature has it's way in form mass extinction events, even if we survive that, our species is way more violent and a civil/traditional war will obliterate most of humanity.

</comment><comment><USER16> If they have a valid point they are not telling it well or at all.

They seem to think current food supplies can via efficiencies be increased magically by a 100% or something.

They don't even seem to be looking at non food issues like oil use or the fact the 1st world (And it's mega resource use) is tripling.

Let alone technologies that might increase the life span by years which'll cause 9 billion to seem like a small figure.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm tired of this Buckminster Fuller / Alfred E. Neuman "What, me worry?" argument. Just because humans are clever doesn't mean we're exempt from natural and physics boundaries. To deny that is hubris to the extreme.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is the most purblind, misguided editorial opinion I have read in weeks. It repeats an old saw often repeated by people who don't understand the Logistic function and its role is describing biological systems:

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

The Logistic function concisely describes the behavior of biological systems that don't have any control over their numbers, as humans most certainly do not.

At the left, the function's curve is nearly flat because there aren't enough living organisms to support a higher birth rate.

At the right, the functions's curve is nearly flat because _mass starvation and death prevents a higher birth rate_.

The Logistic function models a growing biological colony in a finite world, and it applies to any biological colony. For such a biological colony, eventually _mass birth is balanced by mass death_.

Does this model have any bearing on the human biological colony? Let me answer by saying as time passes, more and more accounts of mass death are met by less and less surprise or alarm among the world's population.

At Sandy Hook, a boy has a fight with his mother, so -- being a healthy young boy, possessed of normal instincts -- he kills her, then goes to a local school and kills as many people as he can possibly manage. The story makes national headlines for a few days, all those innocent children systematically killed by an amateur, acting on a whim. But that story evaporates, pushed out the public's consciousness by another story of mass death, and another.

By contrast, when the Lindbergh baby was kidnapped in March 1932, it made national headlines for years -- _years_ \-- until the perpetrator was apprehended, tried, and executed in 1936. It's the story of one family, one child, one murder. Today that story wouldn't be able to compete with the latest mass murder account. "Oh, Bashar Assad has killed 1,500 people in a nerve gas attack. Oh, well, they're not anyone I know personally. What else is in the news?"

The author of the linked editorial concludes his article by saying, "The only limits to creating a planet that future generations will be proud of are our imaginations and our social systems. In moving toward a better Anthropocene, the environment will be what we make it."

Both claims are likely, but with one important difference -- future populations will wonder what we were thinking, as we struggled to avoid considering the consequences of our own actions. As to "the environment will be what we make it", that is certainly true -- we will gradually tolerate more and more mass death, a process that has already begun.

At the next Sandy Hook mass killing, people will say, "Hey, what can you do? Boys will be boys. But this can't be allowed to stand in the way of progress."

<comment><USER2> The logistic model especially assumes that the carrying capacity is constant. Which it's not, for humanity.

<comment><USER5> > The logistic model especially assumes that the carrying capacity is > constant.

Yes, but the model easily accommodates scenarios in which more and more sustenance is squeezed out of the environment, which is the primary argument of the deniers. Finally, though, because big loaves of bread don't give birth to little rug-rat loaves of bread, the Logistic function predicts the same outcome -- mass birth balanced by mass death.

I'm not saying there's a solution to this problem -- there isn't -- only that people who deny that it's a problem are living in a fantasy.

<comment><USER6> _I 'm not saying there's a solution to this problem -- there isn't_

It seems to me that you actually agree with the article's claim that the primary problem is social. You just don't agree with the article's claim that the problem can be solved; basically you don't think humans will be able to come to grips with the social changes that would be required to manage ourselves as a species responsibly. Is that a fair statement of your position?

<comment><USER5> > You just don't agree with the article's claim that the problem can be solved > ...

That's correct. The article relies on a common logical error, to wit: catastrophe hasn't overtaken us yet, and that stands as evidence that it cannot ever happen, i.e. the past predicts the future.

It's one thing to accept that we can't solve population problems by pointing fingers at other people. But it's quite another to try to claim the problem doesn't exist at all.

> basically you don't think humans will be able to come to grips with the > social changes that would be required to manage ourselves as a species > responsibly.

It's a bit more complicated than that. In a mixed population of people who can grasp the nature of biological limits, and others who cannot, those who cannot eventually become the entire future population -- people congenitally indisposed to act intelligently. It's the inevitable outcome of natural selection.

That's an easy problem to state, but impossible to do anything about without abandoning all civilized standards of behavior. If we do nothing, mass death becomes the problem. If we try to "solve" the problem, fascist and eugenic political measures become the problem. That's not any kind of choice.

My point? This isn't a movie in which everything gets resolved in the third act. All our choices are bad ones, but the worst is to imagine the problem doesn't exist, as the author of the linked article tries to do.

<comment><USER6> _In a mixed population of people who can grasp the nature of biological limits, and others who cannot, those who cannot eventually become the entire future population -- people congenitally indisposed to act intelligently. It 's the inevitable outcome of natural selection._

Yes, I see you make this argument on your page on evolution that you linked to. The only possible flaw that I can see is that you say it is

 _impossible to do anything about without abandoning all civilized standards of behavior_

I'm not saying I have a solution that doesn't require that; but I'm not sure that our only option is giving up on trying to find one. I.e., instead of "impossible" in the quote above I would put "extremely difficult". But I admit that's purely a matter of opinion on my part.

<comment><USER5> > I'm not sure that our only option is giving up on trying to find one.

No one is suggesting "giving up". In any case, it's not in the nature of science to give up on searching for solutions. But as things stand, there's no obvious solution.

> instead of "impossible" in the quote above I would put "extremely > difficult".

My use of "impossible" was only with respect to measures that modify the behavior of individuals by force. That's impossible without abandoning civilized standards. I don't normally use the word "impossible" without good reason.

<comment><USER6> _My use of "impossible" was only with respect to measures that modify the behavior of individuals by force. That's impossible without abandoning civilized standards._

Ok, yes, I agree with this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> yay black & white comparisons.

and climate change isn't due to human activity!

</comment><comment><USER19> The main failure of this article is that it assumes that social problems are outside biology and that they are easy to solve.

Currently world produces enough food for everyone. Then why do we have 700 - 800 million malnourished people, even more people facing food insecurity, why we are destroying farmland and why are we wasting the primary macronutrients: nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K).

Overpopulation is real because we as species are not distributing resources equally and we are not rational.

<comment><USER14> >The main failure of this article is that it assumes that social problems are outside biology and that they are easy to solve.

The main point of this article is that the archeological record proves that this is the case. 200,000 years of evidence suggests that, in spite of our superstitions, we humans _are_ capable of managing our resources and replenishing the world from which we derive our sustenance.

Are you _sure_ you're not just harboring a fixed superstition on the subject, which has just been challenged?

<comment><USER5> > The main point of this article is that the archeological record proves that > this is the case.

DO you know what they say on Wall Street? "Past performance is no guarantee of future returns"? The same rule applies to biology. The reason the future diverges from the past is because it's guaranteed to be different. As to human population growth, there's no basis for comparing the future to the past. But I will say this -- on at least one occasion in the past, humans were nearly wiped out by just one volcanic eruption:

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

Quote: "The Toba catastrophe theory suggests that a bottleneck of the human population occurred c. 70,000 years ago, proposing that the human population was reduced to perhaps 10,000 individuals[3] when the Toba supervolcano in Indonesia erupted and triggered a major environmental change. The theory is based on geological evidences of sudden climate change and on coalescence evidences of some genes (including mitochondrial DNA, Y-chromosome and some nuclear genes)[4] and the relatively low level of genetic variation with humans."

Ten thousand humans. The only reason we survived as a species is because of chance, not destiny. And that event is easily seen in the genetic record -- it's very likely to be just one of many examples where we survived only by chance, on a planet where 90% of all species have been wiped out.

> Are you sure you're not just harboring a fixed superstition on the subject > ...

I just quoted the scientific record. I can also describe the Logistic function, a scientific biological modeling tool that reliably predicts the future of species who try to exceed the carrying capacity of their environments:

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

The curve is nearly flat at the left because there are too few organisms to sustain a higher growth rate.

The curve is nearly flat at the right because mass starvation results in too few surviving organisms to sustain a higher growth rate.

Welcome to natural selection, and to science.

<comment><USER14> We managed to survive. We'll continue to manage to survive: if we manage.

Welcome to logical positivism. :P</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Does Google corporate use Exchange servers? - <AUTHOR>

I'm contemplating using Google for enterprise email and I wonder if Google uses Google or Microsoft. Anybody know? <comment><USER2> Why do you care what products Google uses internally? Without knowing anything about your intended use case, Google are likely facing a pretty different set of requirements, and they probably have a very different set of resources (e.g. they obviously have a lot of in-house expertise on how the Google Apps suite works).

</comment><comment><USER3> You're joking, right?

Google uses its own products. They live in GMail and Calendar.

</comment><comment><USER4> They use google apps.

<comment><USER5> Citation?

<comment><USER6> The googlers I've talked to have said they use gmail and google docs internally.

<comment><USER7> I can also confirm that

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Gmail runs on the Google GFE/1.3 server, which is hosted on a Linux Operating System. See here <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmail>

</comment><comment><USER9> Exchange email is acceptable but not outstanding. The reason that most companies end up with Exchange is the good calendaring support.

Try your free or less expensive options first and see what your employees think. At our company (back when we were a startup) our first IT hire's first job was to install Exchange -- the executive team was absolutely done with the inferior product that we were using before it.

Another reason you may wish to not use a hosted environment: your company's data can't be monitored or revealed by a subpoena to the hosting company if there's no hosting company. You can be sure that Google complies with subpoenas and court orders unless they're laughably vague and potentially useful for a PR stunt.

</comment><comment><USER10> I work at a 10K+ employee company which is moving over to gMail, gCalendar, gTalk and gDocs.

gMail and gCal are a potent combination.

</comment><comment><USER11> They came from Exchange but migrated everything to Google Apps.

I think that migration's case it's online. I've readed about it.

</comment><comment><USER12> Gmail came out of the system they were already using internally.</comment>


Ask HN: Project Ideas for interns that don't have an internship - <AUTHOR> I've been mentoring new college grads that are trying to find a job in this environment. I want to extend that further and help out students that had their internship canceled or never got a chance to get one due to the current situation.<p>I'd like to get ideas for projects that interns can reasonably finish on their own during a 3-month period. I'm willing to spend a few hours on weekends reviewing their work and guiding them. Of course, it'd be great if more people could join me to help these kids out. If the project calls for cloud resources, I'm considering paying it up to a certain limit. If there are sources where I can find these potential projects (or if you'd like to see some new feature being developed in an open source project), it'd be great if you can share them. <comment><USER2> Build a mobile app to save info about books I read already. Scanning bar code in the book should save it in my "read" library. Useful for folks who go to library & not sure whether they read a book or not. For eg. picture books of my kids. Also creating multiple profiles is another bonus feature. So I can store books by name of the kid

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea. Will add it to my list. Simple enough to do in a short span of time.</comment></comment>


Jstore free registration - <AUTHOR> https://www.jstor.org/action/registration

<comment><USER2> This article has a lot more info including spreadsheet with the titles available and in about more free content from JSTOR.

[http://www.infodocket.com/2013/01/09/jstor-expands- register-...](http://www.infodocket.com/2013/01/09/jstor-expands-register-and- read-program-general-public-can-now-access-articles-from-more- than-1200-journals-now-available/)

</comment><comment><USER3> The title should say "JSTOR free registration".</comment>


Netflix Public API Program Closing November 14, 2014 - <AUTHOR>

Netflix API Developers,
As Netflix continues to grow internationally, the emphasis of our engineering efforts is to satisfy a growing member base and a growing number of devices.  To better focus our efforts and to align them with the needs of our global member base, we will be retiring the public API program.  Effective on November 14, 2014, public API developers will no longer be able to access Netflix content.  All requests to the public API will return 404 errors.
Thank you to for participating in the ecosystem throughout the years.
Daniel Jacobson
VP of Edge Engineering <comment><USER2> I was disappointed to get that email, I have an API key and am using it for an ongoing side project of mine.

It seems counter to everything else Netflix engineering promotes with its tech blog and open source contributions. To be so public and open on one hand, and then shut down the public API on the other seems strange.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I agree. Frustrating to see the API go away, yet Netflix has a lot of interesting open-source contributions.

</comment><comment><USER3> I hope this doesn't mean the end of Netflix availability reporting on moreflicks.com...</comment>


Wekan: Open-source, trello-like kanban - <AUTHOR> https://wekan.github.io/ <comment><USER2> If anyone is looking for another open source solution, there's [https://github.com/greggigon/my-personal- kanban](https://github.com/greggigon/my-personal-kanban).

What's neat about the above one is it's a single offline html file that you open in your browser and everything is saved to local storage (but it has a JSON export / import feature for more robust backups).

Of course that means it's really only usable for 1 person, but if you're a solo developer, it's a breath of fresh air to just open a simple html file without needing to run a service to use it.

It's not the prettiest tool but it's very usable. I've been using it to manage a large personal side project. I made a video on that here: [https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/an-open-source-and-fully- offl...](https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/an-open-source-and-fully-offline- browser-based-kanban-board)

<comment><USER3> In the same vein -

[https://nullboard.io/preview](https://nullboard.io/preview) or [https://github.com/apankrat/nullboard](https://github.com/apankrat/nullboard)

<comment><USER4> I like that a lot. It would be super nice if I could change the background of the items. That way I could color code things that really need to get taken care of NOW.

<comment><USER5> If you are looking for a personal Kanban application where you can colour the cards, please see: [https://www.hyperplan.com](https://www.hyperplan.com)

(I am the author)

<comment><USER4> Thanks! I liked nullboard pretty minimal design and that the tasks can be one line or multiline. Most of the kanaban tools look like post it notes, and I liked that the tasks were mininimal size.

All I was missing is to be able to stick one of 4-8 colors on the background of the box.

I'll have some time to look at hyperplan, thanks for the pointer

<comment><USER5> -You can colour the background of the card according to any property of the card (e.g. its priority or the date due) -Cards can have any number of properties -You can store various 'views' (e.g. view 1 is x=status,y=person,colour=priority, view 2 is x=person,y=department,colour=due date)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wekan uses meteor.js which is really one of the worst frameworks out there. It breaks on so many ocasions and has really bad OS support. Event he current maintainer kind of dislikes the framework... The worst part about metor is that it forces you to use MongoDB!

<comment><USER7> While I tend to agree from a personal perspective, however the Wekan project especially seems to be able to pump out lots of very nice features at a high rate, thanks to meteor. Additionally to this, we at Cloudron update the app package about twice a week due to that and so far had very little breakage or regressions, compared to other apps. We do not update meteor often though, which is maybe contributing to the stability.

<comment><USER6> Yes that helps but brings in other problems. For example many many security problems in the thousands of used npm packages of meteor and its dependencies.

<comment><USER8> Unfortunately thousands of dependencies is not unique to meteor, it is the hallmark of any popular npm package. So even react and vue would have too many dependencies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I do most of my thinking and planning on Trello boards. It almost feels like a part of my brain.

Ever since Trello was acquired by Atlassian, I've been planning to replace it - in the long term - waiting for signals that Atlassian is degrading my experience. It hasn't happened yet but I am assume that it's a matter of time.

I've been wanting an open source Trello clone with a native desktop client for a while now. Going to give this a try.

First impression: promising but seems a bit clunky/ugly compared to Trello. Hope I can contribute to the development in some way.

<comment><USER10> I have been using Kanboard for some time now, and can recommend it. There is - as far as I know it - not yet a native desktop client, but the web-interface works quite well: [https://kanboard.org/](https://kanboard.org/) (not affiliated in any way - just a safisfied user)

<comment><USER11> It's a php app. All you have to do to run it locally is use the php server:

php -S localhost:8001

Open in your browser:

localhost:8001/index.php

You can also directly access the sqlite database if you want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Shameless plug for Mac users:

[https://apps.apple.com/app/tidycards/id1285199566](https://apps.apple.com/app/tidycards/id1285199566)

I've been developing this app for the last 3 years.

</comment><comment><USER13> I really like kanban boards for organizing my work but one feature I really miss in nearly all solutions is a way to schedule my day using existing tasks in a board. And preferably in a stand-alone way rather than adding it to my google calender.

I'm currently using paymo [1], which does a great job at this. Example of what I mean: [https://imgur.com/a/3Re9sXn](https://imgur.com/a/3Re9sXn) But I'm open for switching to any alternatives.

[1]: [https://www.paymoapp.com/](https://www.paymoapp.com/)

<comment><USER14> this is not a feature I have ever missed, and I wonder why you would miss it? I move the task I am working on into in progress and when I am done with it I move it into review or done. If I scheduled my day based on tasks, then when task A was not moved from in progress and task B is scheduled to start what happens? It sounds to me like it would be more problematic - sorry to go on about it but I really am wondering because I've never considered I would want to schedule tasks on a kanban board - how do you see it working?

<comment><USER15> I follow some practices from Cal Newport Deep Work [1]. In this case it is about scheduling your day (see also this blogpost [2]).

I really like the feature in paymo to schedule your working day with tasks that do exist in a kanban board. It ensures that you can quickly see what you're working on when picking things to do during the day and it also ensures that everything you do is in a kanban board.

I understand that most people probably don't miss this feature but I have a hard time going back to a system that does not have this.

[1]: [https://www.calnewport.com/books/deep- work/](https://www.calnewport.com/books/deep-work/)

[2]: [https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2015/09/29/deep-habits- three...](https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2015/09/29/deep-habits-three-recent- daily-plans/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> To add to the other alternatives: remember that there's Excel, i.e. spreadsheet software. It's my current method for organizing and monitoring my solo work. Some of the useful features:

\- Handling dates, intervals, boolean values.

\- Formatting, and conditional formatting. Colors, fonts etc. without the non- utilitarian, "sleek" burden of modern web design.

\- Collecting reporting information with SUM(), IF(), COUNTIFS() and friends.

The main benefit is that it's very flexible with only very minimal programming. I can reserve my coding time and stamina for the tasks that absolutely need it.

</comment><comment><USER17> I chose Kanboard[1] for personal user because it's PHP and supports SQLite. I hate becoming an admin for these kind of apps. Also chose FreshRSS over Tiny Tiny RSS for the same reasons. Works by just uploading a directory to my shared hosting.

[1] [https://kanboard.org/](https://kanboard.org/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Not open source, but I built KanRails, a Kanban tool that hopes to become a workflow solution. Part Trello, part Pipefy, and making more Power-Ups part of the core (automation, custom fields, etc.).

Check it out at [https://www.kanrails.com/](https://www.kanrails.com/). Would love to get feedback from HN!

</comment><comment> kalium-xyz Anyone using/used this in a team and know if its actually a good replacement for trello?

<comment><USER19> We have been using it for 3 years now at a small company. There were some minor bugs in the past (mainly UI related), but in general it is a very good replacement for Trello.

We run it in a Docker container with LDAP integration so that people can log in with their Windows accounts. The operating of it has been very straightforward.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't really like the name. I think it's meant to be pronounced We-Can, which pretty much sums up Kanban, but I automatically think of Weaken, which then makes the product sound like it's going to hinder your workflow in some way.

<comment><USER21> Doesn't it sound more like "We can"?

<comment><USER22> Single data point: before reading these comments, my first reading of the word was pronouncing it "weh-can".

Perhaps "WeKan" or "Weekan" would get the other pronunciation across better, if that's the goal?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I used Wekan a while ago when I wanted to try a kanban board for organizing my personal tasks at work. Trello was out of question since it stores the data externally.

I found the UX on Wekan and Trello were hard to compare, Trello being polished and hassle free while Wekan still felt like work in progress and many things were straight out broken.

This was like a year ago, though, so maybe it has improved since.

<comment><USER24> On PC, it worked perfectly. On smartphone (Android), it works really bad. That's the reason why I (sadly) had to leave Wekan behind, it just didn't fit my use case because of this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> We use this daily in our company. Projects are organized as boards. To solve visibility issues across multiple boards we develop a standalone program to consolidate cards from multiple boards to a user view. There has been issues like CPU usage, UI bugs and build issues but on the whole it is still quite useful.

Development and releases seems haphazard and there are no unit tests. Only eslint.

<comment><USER19> Can you share the program to consolidate cards? We are also using Wekan in our company and would be very interested in that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Would like to leave this here: [https://github.com/rcdexta/react- trello](https://github.com/rcdexta/react-trello)

Again, this is a pluggable trello-like kanban board built using React and Redux. It's highly customizable, uses event-bus to publish triggers/actions and supports touch devices.

</comment><comment><USER27> There is also Restyaboard [0] (you have to install it on your server)

It's open source Trello like kanban board. I think there was even 1-click droplet install in DigitalOcean. Haven't used it much, so I can't really comment how good/bad it is.

0 - [https://restya.com/board](https://restya.com/board)

</comment><comment><USER28> the disclaimer about backups is a bit scary... makes me want to use something a bit more reliable/recoverable/version controllable...

> Backups of Wekan database with mongodump once a day miminum required. Bugs, > updates, users deleting list or card, harddrive full, harddrive crash etc > can eat your data. There is no undo yet.

</comment><comment><USER29> Taiga is another option that you can host yourself.

[https://taiga.io](https://taiga.io)

<comment><USER30> Have used a self hosted version of Taiga for years at work hooked into Keycloak for SSO. Works perfectly well for us :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> It would be really nice to have something like this that can run locally but meant for a single user. I don't want to have to log in to my own instance or host a bunch of backend services (or even run it in a docker container).

Might be a fun weekend project to learn Rust, actually. :)

<comment><USER11> Kanboard is very easy to run locally as I explained in my other comment

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22888108](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22888108)

I don't think replacing Trello is a weekend project, but if you want to learn Rust, you can use Kanboard to track your progress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Kanbanly integrates with GMail and Google Tasks. [https://nodetics.com/kanbanly/](https://nodetics.com/kanbanly/)

</comment><comment><USER33> Assumption: Most teams which use a kanban system would work just as efficiently with a couple of org-mode files.

<comment><USER34> What are org-mode files?

<comment><USER33> Basically, structured text files. See orgmode.org.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The font sizes and weights look inconsistent and random.

<comment><USER36> Send a PR to fix that, the devs will probably appreciate the help.

<comment><USER37> That's an empty advice.

Vast majority of people will have no desire or time to "send a PR" after seeing it for the first time. And those who will be inclined to do that don't need a public reminder to that effect. But their feedback is still valuable and the "do better and send a PR" remarks achieve nothing but alienating people by looking dismissive of their comments.

<comment><USER38> How is their feedback useful if no one involved sees it? They may as well have said nothing.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Dick Costolo said his job was safe a month ago - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2015/06/11/dick-costolo-said-job-was-safe/

<comment><USER2> What's he supposed to say..."Yeah, I could be fired. The leadership has no confidence in me".

That's ridiculous. Give him a break.</comment>