Show HN: Switchboard – A mDNS based reverse proxy for personal infrastructure - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/whytheplatypus/switchboard <comment><USER2> I'm in the process of building out a smallish home lab, with most things running in containers, and one of the things I wanted was dns for my internal things that Just Worked. It seems this is still harder than it needs to be. I started looking at Consul + Traefik, but the latest version of Traefik seems to have gotten significantly more complex for simple use cases. I've since started looking at Caddy, which seems far more straightforward. I will look at this, however, since it might be simpler still.

<comment><USER3> The simplest: shared `/etc/hosts`. And container hint: you can bind mount individual files as volumes.

<comment><USER4> Also cool is that you can bind mount the same sqlite backing db file into multiple containers.

<comment><USER5> That seems dangerous? How can it be so? Surely multiple instances of SQLite shouldn't read the same backing file..

<comment><USER4> The whole job of sqlite is to handle the locking to keep such accesses safe.

<comment><USER5> Ok, I see. I did some reading and it looks like this to me:

* the DB is supported by a backing file

* this backing file supports multiple read threads simultaneously but writes are locked via filesystem locks

* write performance with multiple writers is therefore dangerous

* read performance is good if no one is writing and consistent even if someone is

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A little bit of docs would help. Not sure what a node is here, and what is mDNS doing.

Seems like the perfect thing for me (I run a stupid dual-traefik setup that does TLS SNI negotiation for me that I want to get rid of), but I can't figure out what is this.

<comment><AUTHOR> very very fair.

mDNS is just the method of communicating what traffic should be sent where. The "switchboard" listens for mDNS broadcasts that tell it what services want traffic routed to them under what conditions. A "node" (which was a bad choice of words) is the other side of that, a program broadcasting one of those mDNS resources (e.g. send traffic that's been sent to the domain "example.test" to this machine on port 8080)

<comment><USER7> How does it work with LetsEncrypt? I always thought you need to be public in order to get valid SSL certs. How does LetsEncrypt work with mDNS?

<comment><USER8> mDNS would be used for the internal network to discover hosts. The proxy server would terminate SSL using a LetsEncrypt certificate before forwarding traffic to one of the internal nodes (discovered via mDNS).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have about 70 devices and services at home (pure software services such as a web app, up to WiFi-connected IoT).

I manage everything via dnsmasq on my router, and I use a DNS wildcard to make sure that all unknown IPs map to my server.

This is because the server holds the docker engine on whihc all "software services" are located. I did a few bounces between Traefik and Caddy over the years and finally settled on Caddy.

Caddy is a truly fantastic web server. If you manually forced IPs on your containers there is not problem at all (2 lines per service). If you did not, there is unfortunately no built-in mechanism in Caddy to autodiscover them (such as the one in Traefik). I wrote my own using the new Caddy API (v2).

</comment><comment><USER10> My router (runs Tomato, but I think DD-WRT is the same) automatically puts host names into its DNS server; I've never had to do anything.

Host names with spaces, etc (e.g., DNS non-compliant) don't work, but otherwise it Just Works.

Edit: language

<comment><USER11> I'm pretty sure this is more feature rich than dnsmasq, but the golang ipkg on the latest OpenWRT release is 99MB. My overlay filesystem started at less than 24MB. This software not for users like us. Perhaps someone will implement equivalent functionality using C or Python libraries for those of us that run by choice in a resource-constrained or embedded environment.

<comment><USER12> That's going to be the golang compiler - you can cross compile static binaries from your PC that will run on ARM. The final binary size should be a few mb.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm actually looking for something that does the mDNS registration for multiple back-end services (I did [https://github.com/piku/avahi- aliases](https://github.com/piku/avahi-aliases) for announcing mDNS hostnames, which will go along nicely with this, but wanted an all-in-one or a Traefik/Caddy plugin that would do the registration itself).

<comment><USER14> Would you be willing to make a Caddy plugin for it? Here's how: [https://caddyserver.com/docs/extending- caddy](https://caddyserver.com/docs/extending-caddy)

<comment><USER13> I'm trying to figure out whether or not I keep using DBus and leverage Avahi or not, but that's the general idea - either Caddy or Traefik.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Cloudflare Argo Tunnel is awesome, though it requires Argo which is $5 a month.

[https://developers.cloudflare.com/argo- tunnel/](https://developers.cloudflare.com/argo-tunnel/)

Run a simple command locally, and have a https server endpoint connected to anything on your machine.

<comment><USER16> My favorite is ngrok. Great developer and well documented product that I even rely on for production.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hope this isn't too off topic, but does anyone happen to know if there's any way to VPN with mDNS so that iTunes syncing and/or media sharing work remotely?

<comment><USER18> You generally need an Ethernet based VPN which you can do with openvpn.

Otherwise Avahi has a mode to allow reflecting (mdns traffic between two interfaces) on point to point interfaces and if you run that on the VPN server it may let mdns work from your vpn client to the local lan of the server. Will depend if your mdns implementation tries to query on the VPN interface though. Which again for avahi you can enable point to point on the client side. Unsure if you can do that on windows/Mac.</comment></comment>


Fotopedia is shutting down - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fotopedia.com/fotopedia-shutdown/ <comment><USER2> Never heard of it before, but its homepage - [http://www.fotopedia.com/reporter/magazine](http://www.fotopedia.com/reporter/magazine) has lots of great pics.

And [http://www.fotopedia.com/reporter/stories/CxVE4flM6pA](http://www.fotopedia.com/reporter/stories/CxVE4flM6pA) is pretty good

<comment><USER3> This is really sad news to hear, especially after having put 6+ years into building the photo-encyclopedia and community of storytellers. But there are still other great storytelling platforms out there to give a home for Fotopedia's orphaned stories! Exposure.so focuses on photo narratives Cowbird.com is a great place for personal stories (and is funded by their community), Storehouse is good for visual storytelling on the iPad, and also the visual storytelling platform Maptia (full disclosure I'm a co-founder) at [http://maptia.com](http://maptia.com) – our team is already working hard to get a special import feature ready for Fotopedia storytellers – please email us at firstname.lastname@example.com if you're interested in joining our community and would like to use our import feature to preserve your stories!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can you please provide this data to Archive.org or work with them to save this data?

<comment><USER5> Already talking to Jason/ArchiveTeam about it.

<comment><USER6> Are you affiliated with the site and in a position to provide the data, or just scheming to grab as much data as possible before the site goes down?

<comment><USER5> The latter. I've already reached out on Twitter, but you know, contingency plans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> These guys saw my site

[http://ookaboo.com/](http://ookaboo.com/)

years ago and tried to hire me but I was too hung up in a dead end job and my general confusion at the time. It's funny to me know that after this time I have the stronger hand!

I probably lose $300 a month running Ookaboo right now, and I can afford that, but my site could use some sprucing up and more photos.

Write me or call me at +1 (607) 539 6254 if you want to see this happen.

<comment><USER8> why does it cost you so much to run this site?

<comment><USER7> It has 100GB+ of image files and handles pretty heavy traffic volume from web crawlers alone because it has something like 5 million pages covering 2 million or so data items. I need a hefty MySQL instance to back it because

(i) I need to have fast response time for the site to be usable (ii) The database is horribly bloated (maybe 80% of the table mass doesn't have to be there) (iii) The physical instance of the database isn't as optimized as it could be

An optimized system would cost a lot less to run. It's plausible that better monetization could make the site break even now, but if I could lower the cost per image by a 3x-10x factor I might be able to put more images in (there are another 50 million or so I can grab) and maybe drive up traffic but really I haven't done it because I've been pursuing other deals that have better expectation values.

Also from an ops perspective it is a wooden round, I only have to make an editorial change once a week and something goes wrong with it technologically less than once in six months. In theory I could delete a bunch of database columns and the system might keep cruising, but it might come crashing down and cost $1000's in billable time to make right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone have the owner's contact? If so please put me in touch at tonylandis-at-gmail, I am interested in purchasing.

</comment><comment><USER6> Wow - only 10 days notice!

<comment><USER10> That is probably a cut off of some kind. [e.g. Not enough $$ to pay for their servers]

<comment><USER6> Yeah, but this is not their data, it belongs to their users. It would have been better to communicate before now.

<comment><USER11> Better is relative. They could have just iced the site and killed their email, which i hear is not a rare course to take.

How many days notice equates to appropriate when killing the hopes and dreams of an0n users?

<comment><USER6> How about a month? How about making sure that users can log in and download their own data whenever they want, even if the rest of the site doesn't work? How about uploading public posts to the Internet Archive?

<comment><USER11> Sounds ok, but think about the pain of that for the creators? not to mention continuing costs. I do not think there is a perfect answer, but maybe the 'community' should come up with a largely agreed upon time and call it something descriptive and recognizable...

<comment><USER6> Neither of those things sounded that painful to me. I just mean you don't have to maintain the full site functionality (and associated cost), because the goal is just to make the data available.

<comment><USER11> If i had a site, and i knew people loved it, just not enough, then killing it would bring me pain. but that is emotional and subjective.

<comment><USER6> Oh sure, but imagine how all the people providing their content to your site would feel about you deleting their content!

<comment><USER11> Indeed. So there has to be a way to fairly and logically kill something someone presumably loves whilst also making sure original content is protected.

Let's get on this everyone has some spare time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What was the original intended business model of Fotopedia?

<comment><USER13> >What was the original intended business model of Fotopedia?

Get bought by Google, Facebook or Yahoo.

<comment><USER14> Same as all consumer businesses without any monetization model whatsoever then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Never heard of it before, I do like the map feature which is showing you pictures close to your location. [0] How were they going to monetize it? I can't find any information on the site but I think exposure.co's [1] pricing is pretty good. It's pretty much the same business (I don't know about Fotopedia's story editor but the one exposure is using is amazing) and they are charging for it.

[0] [http://www.fotopedia.com/reporter/map](http://www.fotopedia.com/reporter/map)

[1] [https://exposure.co/](https://exposure.co/)

</comment><comment><USER16> Really sad to hear about this - I love their iOS Apps, "Wild Friends" and "National Parks" in particular - beautiful photographs and I love the story telling aspect and frequent updates. I'll have to have a good look through them again before they stop functioning. Hopefully the content can be archived somehow - ideally in a way the app can access, although that's probably impossible without their help.

</comment><comment><USER17> Those pics are beautiful and very hi-resolution. They do have a story to tell.

SmugMug may not be directly related but they make a fortune by giving sellers the options to sell live prints of their pics, paid galleries, etc. Also AdSense on free accounts cannot hurt either. I'm sure there must be a dozen different ways like this to monetize the site (unless of course the site costs a million dollar per month to run)

</comment><comment><USER18> Hi everyone!

We wrote up a little comparison of all the Fotopedia alternatives.

You can check it out here:

[https://bonjourn.al/blog/17-fotopedia-alternatives-a- short-l...](https://bonjourn.al/blog/17-fotopedia-alternatives-a-short-list)

</comment><comment><USER19> As many here never heard of it before but it looks like an awesome service and looks like they have an active community, wondering what went wrong? anybody? and again what was their monetization approach? We can all learn from that.

</comment><comment><USER14> Real pity. I loved the beautiful photography the app provided. It made me want to travel more. Maybe they should have work with the travel industry to make bookings available. Oh well.

</comment><comment><USER20> Would National Geographic not be interested in purchasing this and keep it alive? It would be a shame to see it disappear.

</comment><comment><USER21> Have they tried selling prints? We also provide a photo to painting API that can be monetization for photo apps like this.

</comment><comment><USER22> Their domain name would itself be worth quite some amount.</comment>


Newton's Financial Misadventures in the South Sea Bubble [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/mania13.pdf <comment><USER2> I read about it first in _The Intelligent Investor_ By Graham, but it's nice to get a more in depth description of this anecdote.

One of my friends once asked me how the growth in cryptocurrency value i an unsustainable bubble when so many smart and math proficient people believe in it. This is a handy bit of Newton trivia to make the point that the intelligent investor is not necessarily the one with the best math proficiency but the one who understands and abuses market folly. When everyone goes right look if there's anything of value people might've missed to the left.

<comment><USER3> Smart people moving into cryptocurrency and cryptocurrency being a bubble aren't mutually exclusive in another way: the long term potential of cryptocurrencies could be valid, even if it's in a short term bubble.

I think there are a lot of parallels between cryptocurrency/block chain tech now and the dot com bubble in the 90s. During the dot com bubbles fortunes were made and lost over nothing and there were many scams and vaporware business, but the underlying tech was sound and if you could identify the real businesses (e.g. Amazon, eBay) from the trash you could still make a lot of money in the long term even as the bubble popped and the market crashed. In a way, the bubble popping was good in a 'creative destruction' sort of way for clearing the brush (scammy and terrible companies) so the real ones could emerge and thrive. I think something similar will happen with cryptocurrency and blockchain tech.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For those who want an accessible introduction to the South Sea Bubble, Extra History has a video series on the causes and aftermath: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1kndKWJKB8&list=PLEb6sGT7oD...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1kndKWJKB8&list=PLEb6sGT7oD8HXTsBEmm3uxFrnvsmfOfhg)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for that link! It's really ironic I was getting ads of a Mexican bitcoin exchange while watching this!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article kind of changed my life perspective in so many ways. Till now, I always believed that Newton & Einstein were "otherworldly" scientists who never dabbled in earthly mortal ventures like equity , SIP, mutual funds etc. Now I realize they had to worry about their subsistence & daily bread just as I need to.

<comment><USER7> Also, that even the smartest of us are vulnerable to the power of greed, 'fear of missing out' and herd mentality, to trump rational thought/judgement.

It is why we will always have financial bubbles and scams.

<comment><USER6> Agree with you, but I always thought highly of Newton coz he died a virgin. Not that I aspire to be like him :D But he was a hardcore scientist through & through. Maybe that's why I always thought of him as "out of this world" genius.

<comment><USER8> > Agree with you, but I always thought highly of Newton coz he died a virgin.

What? That's why you think highly of him? Not because of his contribution to Physics and Newtonian mechanics? That's really strange.

<comment><USER6> No, you got me very wrong.

I thought he was a nerd, who disliked socializing and kept to himself in his home doing & reading science. Also thought he was hardcore introvert.

Had I been like him the past few years, I would had achieved what I had set out to. Instead I pursued dames in my college & set out on romantic adventures.

Was of the opinion that all super successful scientists & engineers had the same MO, & I always thought of Newton to be like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Suppose he was a master of seeing trends till his last days. All this happened when Newton was almost 80 years old. However, he died 7 years later happily as one of most famous people of all times.

<comment><USER10> Was he really happy? Newton was generally an angry loner who spent a lot of effort demeaning his peers.

<comment><USER9> He died happily by demeaning his peers which were happy because they made a good money from South Sea stocks. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For those short on time, here's a TL;DR image: [https://i.imgur.com/AEzxuLy.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/AEzxuLy.jpg)

<comment><USER12> That chart shows a little under 10x from beginning to peak. Many people compare cryptocurrencies to the South Sea company, however, many of the different cryptocurrencies have gone 15-30x within the last year.

A lot of the hype in the media seems to be gone (or is now "doom and gloom"), so it will be interesting to see whether or not today's values can be sustained without a high rate of people continously buying in.

<comment><USER13> 1\. Most bubbles are not global but geographically restricted in some way; crypto is global.

2\. There is some value to Blockchain technology, so the value is not $0.

3\. When comparing, given all of these assets had a starting value of effectively $0 at launch, you should probably look at them from an angel investment PoV. Peter Thiel got similar returns when investing in Facebook.

I'm not saying crypto is (entirely) comparable to Facebook in value (it might, it might not -- too early), but that's how I think the gains could make sense. It's valued like an internet startup, and then some.

4\. The global market is still tiny? The entire crypto space is $550bn in market cap. Facebook is $552bn in market cap.

Valuations have probably gotten ahead of themselves and a lot of the smaller coins will die eventually, but it's still a blip in the grand scheme of things.

5\. There is too much capital in the world. Too much cheap debt. Too much free money. This will fuel the mania. You could have put $2m in the stock market in 2008-2009, and if you used leverage in a smart way, could have ended up with $75-100m.

<comment><USER10> Most bubbles are debt driven phenomena. I'm not entirely convinced people are playing the crypto market en masse using debt based instruments (besides the dollar itself, which is our point of reference anyways).

<comment><USER13> Maybe not directly, but indirectly? If I have $10m of unrealised gains in the stock market, I can easily borrow $500k against that at near free interest rates to invest that in Bitcoin.

I have a friend who did that, and he has done well. So it's definitely happening.

<comment><USER10> This is going to happen more, especially as mainstream finance gets in the game, but I don't suspect it's common. Also note that the leveraging in your case is inverse. 500k against 10M is 5% leverage, Forex trades are done with 1000%, 10000% leverage...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


BFS vs. Mainline Scheduler: Discussion - <AUTHOR> http://www.pubbs.net/kernel/200909/76667/

<comment><USER2> Having read through the entire (long) discussion, the main takeaway was that setting NO-NEW-FAIR-SLEEPERS caused all of the complaints actual users had about the mainline kernel stuttering, causing frames in videos to skip, etc to all go away. One one system you could enable it with

echo NO-NEW-FAIR-SLEEPERS > /sys/kernel/debug/sched-features

but on another system it was

echo NO-NEW-FAIR-SLEEPERS > /debug/sched-features

Perhaps those two commands do the same thing? Anyways if you're using Linux as a desktop, and you are unhappy with the current scheduler, you should try that as it seems to help a lot of people.

<comment><USER3> Well if you can't find the file sched_features in /sys/kernel/debug or in /debug you can mount it using -

      sudo mount -t debugfs none /sys/kernel/debug

and then proceed to doing the echo thing.

Atleast for me, in Ubuntu 8.10 this directory wasn't mounted automatically !

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks like a dupe of <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=886222>

</comment><comment><USER5> this long term ingo vs con hostility is a good example of how human feeling interacts with technical matters.

It is all public so hopefully we may learn from it</comment>


REPL to any browser in the cloud - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cloudup/browser-repl/ <comment><USER2> Interesting. So I can access the web console right?

I guess if people turn this into a server would be awesome.

Sometimes I want to test cross-browser compatibility. For example, Firefox uses textContent instead of innerText. I can easily verify this without having to have Firefox and Chrome (and IE, Opera, etc) on the same machine at the same time.

<comment><USER3> Exactly why I decided to put this together – quick feature tests on different browsers you intend to support.

The case you mentioned gets me every time: [https://i.cloudup.com/ZQApueTFl6.png](https://i.cloudup.com/ZQApueTFl6.png)

<comment><USER2> Thanks! I will contribute when my hands are a bit loosen. I really like the idea behind it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very cool, this is especially useful on OS X or Linux where you don't have easy access to IE. SauceLabs is an incredible service, but for cases like these it is often overkill to fire up a full browser session to quickly check something in the console. I look forward to using this!

<comment><USER5> trying to understand it: is it a headless full browser that we're trying to connect.?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This provides a service similar to "Can I use..." ([http://caniuse.com](http://caniuse.com)). But I like the idea of testing behavior as well. Behavior differences are only reproducible in certain browsers, but aren't necessarily listed on caniuse.

</comment><comment><USER7> I like using [http://www.browserstack.com/](http://www.browserstack.com/) for VNC'ing into remote browsers.

<comment><USER8> They're pretty good, if you don't mind the lack of security that is.

<comment><USER9> _> if you don't mind the lack of security that is_

Could you please elaborate?

<comment><USER8> They use the same virtual machine multiple times between users. You can basically find traces of previous users on their VMs. Now what if somebody installed a keylogger and you're the next one using the VM?

<comment><USER10> I'm one of the developers in charge of the Sauce Labs' backend and thought I should chime in and confirm with you that that's not the case with our cloud. Our infrastructure is hosted in our own data center and we've gone to great lengths to never, ever reuse VMs. You can read more about our "security through purity" approach: [http://sauceio.com/index.php/2011/09/security- through-purity...](http://sauceio.com/index.php/2011/09/security-through- purity/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Balise, a portable, lightweight IPv4 and IPv6 geolocation API/server - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kz26/balise <comment><USER2> Where and how to update the IP dataset?

<comment><USER3> the file README.txt in the data directory explains that the free datafiles can be downloaded from [https://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/legacy/geolite/](https://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/legacy/geolite/) or you can use the commercial equivalents from MaxMind.

Also, I haven't tested it personally but on Debian you should be able to use the `geoip-database` and `geoip-database-extra` packages (you'll probably need to symlink the dat files into the data/ directory for this tool)</comment></comment>


All the Ways Google Tracks You–and How to Stop It - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/google-tracks-you-privacy/ <comment><USER2> This in a page where uBlock Origin reports blocking 40 requests, or 33%...</comment>


Quantcast valued at $300 million - <AUTHOR> http://www.pehub.com/43941/quantcast-raising-new-cash-at-300-million-valuation/

<comment><USER2> please help (Why is quantcast worth / need 50mm?)

\- we have all seen the webpages that appear in search engines for obscure webpages - we click through, since when they show they are the only thing worthy of a click; we find that the sites gets .9k hits a month and 53% of those were female; then we are ask "Want us to quantifie your site?" and even though we get 10-20k uniques a day we can't really understand why we would want to know these numbers....

\--- What do they do? What is their business model? and why the 50mm? ---</comment>


Doyouevendev.org - <AUTHOR> http://doyouevendev.org/ <comment><USER2> This appears to be an ARG promoting / recruiting for (probably recruiting for) Nona Creative: [https://twitter.com/sasquatchsaskia/status/69774709349511578...](https://twitter.com/sasquatchsaskia/status/697747093495115782)

</comment><comment><USER2> Right now I'm stuck at the part that asks for the first 5 digits of the square root of 2 but rejects 14142, 41421, 1.4142, and 1.41421. I'm just brute- forcing it to find the number they THOUGHT they were asking for.</comment>


Work less, get more: New Zealand firm's four-day week an 'unmitigated success' - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/19/work-less-get-more-new-zealand-firms-four-day-week-an-unmitigated-success <comment><AUTHOR> I've actually been working a 4-day week for the past 2.5 years now, working 30 hours a week instead of 37.5.

My employer has got the better end of the deal by far - I'm as productive as I was working a 5-day week, but had to take a 20% pay cut. Still, it works for me, giving me extra time for family and side projects.

<comment><USER2> This is pretty interesting. Did you feel overworked working 37.5 hours?

I spend more than 40 hours a week at work, but I actually work less than that whole time, because I have to wait for certain processes, or certain people, filling the gaps with activities like reading HN (as in right now).

<comment><USER3> That's really where the productivity gains of the next 20 years will be: free employees from the tyranny of workplace attendance, so that they will not resent these gaps and actually concentrate on end-product.

<comment><USER2> The need for attendance is coordination.

I worked remotely for 3 years in a high-profile company. Being remote helps control your time better. Coordinating anything with other people takes more effort, though, because you can't just walk around, see if somebody is busy, or out for a coffee, etc.

This is definitely solvable with technology, and will increasingly be solved.

There's also economy in employees providing their own computers, internet connectivity, and (most importantly) office space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's somewhat surprising (and not really) that more companies are not competing with each other seriously on real benefits like this to attract and keep talent.

Most jobs provide no real extra benefit. They have a bunch of fake gimmicks like "snack room" or "monthly social event" (read: mandatory team building event but free for the company).

Four-day week for five-day pay is a serious and tangible benefit that a smart company could provide and it would give them a strong hiring/culture advantage for a long time.

That's a 20% reduction in work hours. To me it seems very doable if you build a good high-productivity culture in the company. Meaning everyone kind of knows they have less time to screw around so you save all that for your 3 days off work, and 4 days it's high productivity work.

If this increases productivity by 10%, the cost to the company is the other 10%.

Also consider that 1.5 hours is 18% of the work day. Many companies easily and carelessly waste that much every day.

<comment><USER5> I know some people who do that in big techs, but I've always wondered how that works. My work doesn't really fit in a well defined bucket of "days". Sometimes we have deadlines and Ill work on Sunday. Sometimes I'll have a meeting with someone in an international office and have to accommodate their schedule (sometimes they do the reverse). Sometimes I just have bad days and say "f it" and just stay home. The job gets done, everyone's happy.

Changing from that fluid "as long as shit gets done" schedule to a specific "you now work for days" gets really weird to me. Do I have to work at least 4 days now? What happens with crunch time? What happens if there's an emergency and I end up working on the 5th day, do I get overtime?

Then what happens during perf review? there's already a 500% difference in output between 2 random engineers, and it's already hard to figure out if they're just better, working longer, or what. Comparing the output of a 4 day/week vs a 5 day/week one to make sure the former doesn't get penalized gets tricky.

I mean, if it works at the likes of Google, so I assume people have the answers to these questions. I'm genuinely curious.

<comment><USER6> " What happens with crunch time? "

Managers actually plan, and stop relying on it. Crunch time is not something that should exist, as it's just punishing employees for the inability of management to make a sane schedule.

<comment><USER5> The majority of the time, totally agree with you. But the real world has certain dates that matter, and something things go wrong. Someone gets sick. Someone gets pregnant (I guess something might have gone right rather than wrong here, but you get the point). A server goes down. Shit happens. There's only so much buffer time that's practical to allocate. And black Friday doesn't move.

<comment><USER4> Require "crunch time" to be fairly compensated as it should be (overtime rate) and see how quickly and suddenly crunch time is not needed anymore.

At most companies "crunch time" is just a label stuck on "squeezing salaried employees for every last drop of juice".

When there's no penalty on the company for needing crunch time, suddenly they find themselves needing a lot of it.

You can easily see how nonsensical all of this corporate garbage is by hypothetically flipping it around to the benefit of employees and think about how they would react instead.

Hey boss it's "quiet time" can I go home an hour early for 2 weeks? No ... DING DING!

So don't expect it to be ok to ask me to stay an hour late because it's "crunch time".

Same thing applies to "as long as shit gets done". They always adjust that so that somehow the amount of shit that is expected to get done is more than you can manage in a day. Never the other way around.

No company says "hey enough shit got done for today and it's 3PM so go home and see you tomorrow". No in that case you keep working and get more shit done.

Let's not dress it up, it's all corporate psychological warfare.

<comment><USER5> Your post reminds me of just how spoiled I am, and I understand the problem with my understanding of the situation might be exactly that. I totally worked for companies that match what you describe.

My current employer though? If we had crunch time and then told my boss I was gonna go home an hour early and do 4 days a week for the next 2 weeks to make up for it? No brainer, they'll say yes. It's also not that uncommon for managers to send people home if they shipped a lot of stuff that day.

I'm a manager myself, and I frequently had to have the talk with my reports to tone it down. The last thing I want is burnt out employees. I've actively told some to calm down and work less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not to be that guy, but we all knew that "Less stress" and "better work life balance" would result from working one day less a week, but it doesn't talk about productivity or revenue or any of that. I don't think you can realistically call this a "success" if it's not something most businesses could afford to do, and if there was a productivity loss on par with the 20% of work missed then...they're just paying more for less? Am I missing something here?

<comment><USER8> It's probably not a full 20% loss, but I think your point still stands. To expand a bit:

It seems to me that the only way they could work a day less and not affect the companies productivity is if those employees did nothing during that day anyway. Say that in a work week an employee produced 100 units of work (feel free to substitute this with your favorite productivity microbenchmark). Thus, with the 5 day work-week each day the employee must produce around 20 units of work. Say you reduce that to 4 days, so now each day the worker must produce 25 units of work to be as productive. It follows that in order to work one less day per week the worker must work 25% more per day or overall productivity will suffer.

Imagine that your company implements something like this, suddenly per-day expectations go way up. Can you complete that meeting at 125% speed? Will your builds finish 25% faster? Can you increase your typing speed by 25%? Can you dig that ditch in 3 hours instead of 4? Can you clear tables 25% faster? I don't think anyone wants the consequences of this.

The only way I can remotely see this working out is for the employers of salaried info-workers in high profit-margin industries. For someone employed in a manual or skilled labor position it may be impossible or outright dangerous to attempt to complete tasks at 125% speed. I could however see this being a neat benefit that employers like the Silicon Valley types offer to outbid the competition, but I don't think this is practical for the economy in general.

<comment><USER9> >It seems to me that the only way they could work a day less and not affect the companies productivity is if those employees did nothing during that day anyway.

An alternative would be that the 4-day schedule boosted employee efficiency by enough to make up for missing day 5.

Stress often degrades performance, particularly when it's chronic. I don't find it incredible that giving employees an extra day for their non-work duties/joys might increase their efficiency 20%.

<comment><USER8> > _I don 't find it incredible that giving employees an extra day for their > non-work duties/joys might increase their efficiency 20%._

Note that the employees must improve their efficiency by more than 25% for this to benefit the employer, and that they must do this every single day.

I can easily imagine that Monday mornings would be much more pleasant with a 4-day work week, but beyond that first morning I think it would increase stress. If every day I came to work knowing that my employer expected 125% out of me that day I think I would burnout much faster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Academics studied the trial before, during and after its implementation, > collecting qualitative and quantitative data

All the quantitative measurements given in the article are about the employees' happiness. Of course they felt they had a better work/life balance! Of course they felt less stressed! Of course they said they had more time to spend with their family!

They'd probably feel even better getting paid for five days and working three - and why stop there? Why not two, or one, or zero?

I don't doubt that most people in white collar jobs can be just as productive in four days, with the right incentives, as they currently are in five. But it would be nice, if only to justify the headline, to see metrics from the company's side rather than the parenthetical mention of "employees performing better in their jobs". Did they set up more trusts? Did they draft more legally rigorous wills? Did their customers report higher satisfaction and bring more repeat or referral business? If the "studies" aren't complete nonsense, the numbers were measured for these things. But then why aren't they reported with the same breathlessness as "overall life satisfaction increased by 5%"?

<comment><AUTHOR> > They'd probably feel even better getting paid for five days and working > three - and why stop there? Why not two, or one, or zero?

As someone who went from working a 5-day week to a 4-day week, I feel like a 4-day week is a 'sweet spot' \- I'm just as productive as I was working a 5-day week, but when I work any less than 30 hours a week (e.g. when I take a day off), my productivity always goes down.

<comment><USER11> I agree. Three days is too little (the "weekend" is too long), but four days is just right. I've worked four days for years, now I'm temporarily working five, and I am looking forward to going back. Two days aren't long enough to unwind from the other five, I keep feeling that the week is too long and the weekend too short.

Working four day weeks, every week I'd think "damn, is it the Thursday already?" and on Sunday I'd be looking forward to going to work on Monday

<comment><USER12> It sounds like every week there's a holiday. Weeks with a holiday are awesome.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, it's exactly like that. Every Friday is a holiday.

<comment><USER13> But without the holiday traffic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Society should definitely have a debate about working less. Right now we are very productively warming up the planet 40 hours a week. Just working less is a big part of the solution.

As I was writing this comment I opened [0]. Fascinating read.

"The front runners for lowest average weekly work hours are the Netherlands with 27 hours,..."

"The New Economics Foundation has recommended moving to a 21-hour standard work week to address problems with unemployment, high carbon emissions, low well-being, entrenched inequalities, overworking, family care, and the general lack of free time."

Let's get away from the notion that 40 hours is the norm.

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

<comment><USER15> Assuming that cutting work hours per position would allow for more positions. How would this achieve both less unemployment and less carbon emissions? Would you not need to choose one over the other?

<comment><USER14> Moving to 21-hour week is almost 50% reduction from the current level. But unemployment is not 50%, it's much much lower. I guess it's a matter of degree. If reduction of working hours is radical enough it could reduce both unemployment and emissions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have been thinking about this a lot.

On average, each year I use some of my PTO to be able to take some 3 day weekends which I really enjoy for going outdoor.

This means that I have had some ground to compare 4 day weeks and 5 day weeks. Based on my observation, my output is almost exactly the same. I feel like in a 5 day week, there is at least one day where I feel unproductive, or just wait to coordinate with other people. Since I'm officially paid on that day, it feels like an unproductive day at work.

In a 4 day week, I usually feel like each day has been productive. I sometimes agree to connect on the 5th day, for very specific events, but with no guarantees or expectations on my side. As such, the 5th day feels like I'm 100% off.

</comment><comment><USER17> This sounds awesome but it only works for time-insensitive service provision. Where there's a relatively fixed amount of work to do, but you don't have to constantly be in contact with your customer.

I'm a contractor. I have to pick up the phone _any_ time of day or night or I lose a client. Most of my friends and family work at varying levels of healthcare provision. They can't just send everybody home on Friday. They can't even do that at the weekend. And retail faces similar issues. Plus they're still fighting online sales.

Estate planners are basically the slowest possible service. They could probably work a two day week and let the answerphone and inboxes pick up the grunt work. It's neat that this works for them, but —and this isn't just jealousy— I don't expect this to become widespread any time soon.

<comment><USER6> They could hire enough people to where there would be enough people for every day, yet everyone still gets to work 4 days.

<comment><USER17> Hire more people to handle the same workload? How are you paying for that?

The NHS in the UK —where the employees would most benefit from something like this— is right at the other end of the spectrum in terms of capacity. They are s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d. Long rotas. Unsociable hours. Poor cover. Almost no redundancy.

Throwing more people at the problem would certainly help and there are other issues to do with training and retention, but even if you fix that, it'll eventually come down to money.

<comment><USER18> It's not just the employees who would benefit. There's a structural debt building up which will need to be paid and patients are suffering, too. It's false economy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I feel 3 days, minimum, makes the most sense. You have a day for personal errands, a day dedicated to family activities, and a day for rest and relaxation. As it is, time is hyper squished on the weekends, at least for me it is.

</comment><comment><USER20> Back in 1974 there was a six month spell where the UK worked 3 days a week - to conserve power and coal during a miners strike.

With a 40% reduction in working hours, UK productivity dropped just 4%. (Government's own figures)

I'm not in the least surprised this experiment is a success. I am surprised such things haven't become more common.

</comment><comment><USER21> I seriously belive if work weeks were 4 days a lot of the world's problems would be resolved.

</comment><comment><USER22> > Two-hundred-and-forty staff at Perpetual Guardian, a company which manages > trusts, wills and estate planning, trialled a four-day working week over > March and April, working four, eight-hour days but getting paid for five.

Similar trails were conducted in the eldercare in Sweden or Finland, I have forgot exactly where. The conclusion was that a shorter work week meant that less work got done, resulting in worse service for the citizens. Which seems intuitive. This exercise can't be replicated in other sectors, like construction, teaching, social work or garbage collection, without resulting in worse service or product.

However I do believe that there vast amount of worthless work being done. If you ever worked at a large cooperation you properly shuck your head on multiple occasions when reports, evaluations, surveys and such were being carried out involving multiple departments and requiring multiple approvals only to end unused in the trashcan. I have heard a number as high as 40% of work being done is essentially worthless, it serves no meaningful purpose and the people who made it could as well go home. Perhaps the example in the article is exactly this, the company were simply doing too much worthless work and the real success is realising this, stopping the madness and branding it as a success.

</comment><comment><USER23> The problem is that this extra day will allow them to think of/execute their own plan... but I need them to be part of my plan and have the weekends JUST be for rest.

<comment><USER24> What do you think I'm doing all day at work? Planning my own venture.

<comment><USER23> I actually do this too but I have to say it's hard to work 12h days and then work out and then hang out with the woman/friends/family and then build a business plan. I am a big fan of what three of my friends have done which is take a sabbatical to build a business plan and get fit. I'm not really complaining about my job but I am planning this for 2019 or 2020.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've been working part-time for the past 6-7 years. I cannot even begin to imagine going back to full-time. 4-5 hours a day is maximum for intellectually-heavy job. Anything else is pure waste of time playing pretend. I could have been rich by working full-time all this time, but it's simply not worth to me. Even if I have nothing to do, it beats slaving away my time for someone else.

</comment><comment><USER26> The place I'm working at right now doesn't calculate work hours by the week, but by the month. So you have a lot of freedom in moving your hours around. You could do 4x10h and take a day off each week, work on weekends and take another day off instead and so on.

I would be much happier if I could do 4x8h and have a 3-day weekend, but 4x10h works for now as well.

</comment><comment><USER27> For maximum flexibility, and hopefully also some productivity gains, I'd implement a four-day work week by giving the employee ongoing discretion to use Monday, Wednesday, or Friday as their third "weekend" day, and encourage limiting meetings to Tuesdays and Thursdays, as much as possible.

<comment><USER28> This caters for everyone -- some employees would prefer to take Wednesdays off, while others would prefer three-day weekends. Some of the "work hard play hard" workers, though, would alternate between Mondays and Fridays off so every second weekend is four days long, giving plenty of time for hiking or travel. Others in the "work-life balance" crowd would want to continue working a 5-day week but only 6 hours each day, giving time for daily pickups from school or late night hobbies. Better limit those Tuesday and Thursday meetings to between 10am to 3pm, excluding lunch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> 3 day weekends should be mandatory no matter what. Whether that's 4x10 or 4x8, I'm fine with either.

<comment><USER29> Four tens is a pretty great schedule. Those two extra hours somewhere in the day when there's usually not anybody working are almost as good for productivity as the other eight. And a day off during the week is worth its weight in gold for getting errands and all the other nagging little things that are a huge drag working the whole week.

<comment><USER30> If you work 8 hours a day, plus have to commute into a major city, your evenings are sort of already shot anyways. Working the extra two hours doesn't feel like much extra work and really doesn't feel like it interferes with evenings any worse. Plus usually one way on your commute is not during rush hour, so you save extra time that way too.

And yeah, the 10 hour days really give you a chance to spend longer periods of time being productive. You can get your meetings done and have bigger blocks of productive time during the day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> From TFA I could see that work-life balance is now considered good by 74% of employees, 24% up from the 5-day week. Still pretty far from 100%.

The article does not seem to mention the resulting performance of the company as a whole. I think that should be as front and center as the work-life balance satisfaction figure.

> _Employees designed a number of innovations and initiatives to work in a > more productive and efficient manner, from automating manual processes to > reducing or eliminating non-work-related internet usage," said Delaney._

Employees eliminating non-work Internet usage on their own accord sound a bit implausible, adding to the general feeling of not listing all the salient points that the article invokes in me.

<comment><USER31> Really? I eould certainly do this if it contributed to the company continuing with a 4 day week!

<comment><USER2> Would you suggest it?

I mean, I can see how it could be an employer's initiative. If it's the employees' initiative, I think the situation might be a bit complicated inside. The complications could be an important part of how the experiment went on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'd be happy to get a five-day work week.

Source: salaried American software engineer.

</comment><comment><USER14> Most comments seem to focus on productivity. I have been working 3-4 days a week for the last 5 years. Not sure about productivity but I am definitely happier this way.

</comment><comment><USER33> Ignored this when it first showed up, but Hacker Newsletter resurfaced it for me.

Given a sub-40 hour week, and my own penchant to follow the path of least resistance, I think a happy medium between employer/employee would be making sure the employees are using the time help them help themselves. E.g., use the extra time for a massage, yoga, hiking, cooking class, or whatever usually gets ignored because of work/life interference.

</comment><comment><USER34> Curious if 37signals still does this during the summer.

</comment><comment><USER35> People working 10 hours a day or more should have this option as they are already putting in 40 hours in 4 days. Really puts the absurdity of unpaid overtime into perspective. This idea of working only four days is only as absurd as the idea of working unpaid overtime. We're fine with one so we should be fine with the other.

</comment><comment><USER36> The really unfortunate thing is that this is simply not a change that corporations will make on their own accord. It's game theory; without top-down labor regulation, companies that remain on five-day workweeks will have greater productivity than four-day work weeks. So it's everyone or no one.

<comment><USER37> You assume companies are actually effective at maximizing productivity, and make rational decisions towards that goal. But, for example, I work in an open-office environment, and studies have pretty conclusively shown open- office environments are bad across the board: disease, stress, worker unhappiness, and productivity. Yet, the fad has caught on in SV.

All of Dilbert is a testament to companies not being effective at maximizing productivity.

It's a big change. Big changes scare people, and people would rather assume the simple view that if four days is good, five must be better. Another mythical man-month.

In fact, if five is so clearly better than four, why not six? The first company to do it would have an advantage while the rest caught up!

<comment><USER36> You're not wrong. But I think companies are addicted to simple metrics, despite our industry's ballyhooed trust in data, and so face time trumps efficient use of time. My point was that it will take legislation at the top, whether pushed through via collective bargaining or other means, to force companies to adopt a four day week schedule.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Lots of US federal government agencies and contractors offer 4 day weeks on alternating weeks. I've heard it referred to as RDOs (regular days off) or 9 9s (9 9-hour days instead of 10 8-hour days). At the offices I'm familiar with, almost everyone does it.

</comment><comment><USER39> If a serious percentage of companies started giving people Friday off (or maybe Monday, which is worse?) at some point everyone would do it since people wouldn't be able to get work done on that day. It could happen.

<comment><USER40> I work for a defense contractor in Los Angeles and that's exactly what's happened in our industry. I'm not sure which company was first, but nearly all the defense corporations here are on the 9/80 schedule where you work 9 hours/day (80 hours for the 2-week pay period) and get every-other Friday off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> This could calm the inevitable social unrest once the massive wealth inequality in the West (particularly) the US becomes more apparent to people.

</comment><comment><USER42> I wish this would catch on, but the only way I feel like most companies could be convinced is to cut salaries by 20%

</comment><comment><USER43> Does this simply reduce social mobility ?

If you are already with a strong employer (e.g. banks, google, utilities, monopolies, university) then yay for u.

But if u r in a 2nd tier employer - then u lose the opportunity to out-compete them and advance ?

<comment><USER44> I'm sorry I'm not following. Could you explain in depth a bit more?

<comment><USER43> Hypothetically, an economy will split into top tier employers (say 10%), and the rest.

The top employers, are usually quasi-monopoly or rent-seeking. So these employees can in fact be a bit less productive, and can enjoy the 4 day week, and the employer can remain highly profitable.

The rest of the economy is a lot more competitive. These employers already offer lower wages. With 4 -day weeks, these employers will basically get 20% less revenue per employee, and have to cut back even further.

So now, the inequality between these 2 sectors will simply become even larger.

This is obviously a very gross generalization.

EDIT: the counter argument is that in an advanced economy, many many more employers are service-oriented and in the 1st group.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Fridays off is the best argument for giving Islam greater influence in the US. And the US can water down just about any religion, though the public might enjoy a beheading.

</comment><comment><USER46> I'd love a 30 hr week, then I could get 2 full time jobs.

</comment><comment><USER47> But the employees will use that extra day to search for another job. Not good for business. It's better that the employees have their time stretched thin so that commitment and dependence is kept high.

This is how we do it and it's great. Honestly I don't think employees even realize this is our reasoning.

<comment><USER24> ...and then you reach your 30's and realize you're wasting your life in work.

<comment><USER6> Whoa, there. He didn't say they do that to management.</comment></comment></comment>


No Shit in the App Store? Oh Please - <AUTHOR> http://designbygravity.wordpress.com/2010/04/19/no-sht-allowed-in-the-app-store-oh-please/

<comment><USER2> "Macintosh Keyboard (M0110): Introduced and included with the original Macintosh in 1984, it debuted without arrow keys to control the cursor nor an integrated numeric keypad." [1]

"Few will remember, but, when the Mac debuted in 1984, there were no arrow keys on the keyboard. That was a big deal. Almost every application then in existence depended on the arrow keys (then called cursor keys) for navigation. With that one stroke, Steve reduced the number of apps that could be easily ported to the Mac from tens of thousands to zero, ensuring that this new computer would have a long and painful childhood.

Steve's button mania, which grew from his earlier parts-count mania, was already in full flower, and many have ascribed this crippling omission to some sort of self-destructive obsession. It was not. It was one of several strategies specifically designed to ensure that existing software would not run on this new machine because existing software, in Steve's eyes, sucked (an opinion I share). The absence of those four keys ensured that any developer who wanted to have software appear on the Mac was going to have to start over and write software that conformed to the Mac interface, not the keyboard- oriented precursors to MS-DOS.

Steve's fearless crippling of that original Mac saved that computer and saved the graphical user interface." [2]

1: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Keyboard#History>

2: [http://www.asktog.com/columns/082iPad&Mac.html](http://www.asktog.com/columns/082iPad&Mac.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Random comment on the title (as it occurs in the original post) -- is there anyone in the universe that is actually less offended by "sh!t" than "shit"? I've never really understood why on earth someone would bother obscuring potentially offensive word choice by such silly techniques. Either rephrase things in such a way that they do not contain such words, or just write them out...

<comment><USER4> I would bet it's a cultural leftover from posting in forums and chat rooms with naive profanity filters years ago when the Internet was young.

There are likely still places where sh!t will get you past someone's laughable idea of a profanity filter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> At the very core, he has a point. The delivery I don't care for, but again. He does have a valid point. It's hard to say that the AppStore wants quality.

But like I said in a comment earlier today, I'll gladly welcome a lack of 'quality' for a nice big helping of choice as a consumer.

<comment><USER6> If Apple has a problem with junk in the AppStore already, that's just an even _better_ reason to try to keep more of it out.

I don't understand the thought process that leads to the conclusion that since there are low quality apps in the AppStore, Apple should go out of their way to bring even more of it in.

Also, Apple would get a world of crap if they decided to add something as arbitrary as _taste policing_ to their AppStore review process.

<comment><USER7> But you can make crap by any means, including objective-c, as evidenced by all the 'buddha quotes' etc apps. My idea is that having to pay per app published, say $25, would help disincentivize the shotgun approach.

<comment><USER6> If that was Apple's sole reason for not wanting cross-platform "shovelware", absolutely. But it isn't.

It's more like Apple doesn't want meta-platforms on top of iPhone PS for completely different reasons (control, independence, etc), and aren't willing to _compromise_ because nothing about more cross-platform shovelware intrigues them.

The AppStore is at a place right now where quantity is not an issue; quality is, so that's what they're going to optimize for. Who knows, maybe they'd be more welcoming of cross-platform apps if the AppStore had a quantity-problem (probably not, if history is anything to go by).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Apple can't really control for quality when they've got a million apps in the store. I mean, the idea of rejecting crappy apps probably came about when people were thinking "oh, apps will trickle in a few hundred at a time" instead of flood in. So they take steps like saying "must use Apple tools". On a Mac, cross-platform Java/QT/Wine apps that totally ignore UI custom are incredibly annoying, so that's probably where Apple is coming from in terms of viewing "non-Apple tools" as resulting in poor UI.

And it's silly to ask why Apps are censored but movies/music/TV isn't. The answer's obvious - iTunes includes parental controls for media that allow for blocking content based on industry-standard ratings, and there's no such rating/control system for apps. If the App Store contains a Daily Tits Calendar App, then parents have to completely block their kids from getting apps from the App Store themselves, whereas parents can let kids buy PG-13 stuff in the iTunes store without worrying about them buying R-rated movies or explicit songs.

<comment><USER9> _On a Mac, cross-platform Java/QT/Wine apps that totally ignore UI custom are incredibly annoying_

That's true, but it doesn't really apply to games, where even "native" apps almost always use their own UIs. And it doesn't apply at all to frameworks like MonoTouch, which call exactly the same native UI methods that ObjC apps do.

It's a power grab pure and simple. Flash is the primary target, Android is secondary, and if as a tertiary effect it reduces the percentage of crap apps, that's a nice bonus.

<comment><USER10> It _really_ doesn't apply to games because often people simply don't bother to port them to the Mac. And a regularly given reason, beyond the obvious market size issue is that Apple simply doesn't support game developers, often to the point of being antagonistic. Déjà vu, all over again?

<comment><USER11> Doesn't support game developers how? The largest category in the App Store is games. Regarding OS X, then I would agree it might have something to do with the size of the market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm not familiar with exactly how CS5 generates iPhone apps but I'm curious how these apps would have handled something like multiple cameras. If Adobe's UI control doesn't include a camera switching button what happens when you install the app on an iPhone 4G? Do you have to wait for Adobe to update their library and for the developer to re-submit the application? Do previously submitted applications using Apple's APIs directly automatically inherit the camera switch button? Is the user going to sit there fumbling with the app annoyed that they can't use the features of the new phone they bought? To me that's a very compelling case to restrict non-Apple approved tools. Not sure this is actually the case or not -- just speculation. I think we're entering a phase of technology being so widely used that even the smallest glitches, bugs and inconsistencies are increasingly unacceptable to people.

<comment><USER13> > If Adobe's UI control doesn't include a camera switching button what happens > when you install the app on an iPhone 4G?

Flash CS5 isn't going to be used to build the next big application. It will, however, be very useful for creating (or porting) games and other multimedia experiences. The iPhone 4G will likely have a higher resolution screen and Flash itself mostly resolution independent -- it might not take long for Adobe to update CS5 and all those developers could have 4G ready high-res apps in less time than it takes an Objective-C developers to fire up Photoshop. It's really not as simple as you make it out to be.

> Do previously submitted applications using Apple's APIs directly > automatically inherit the camera switch button?

Most likely not.

> Is the user going to sit there fumbling with the app annoyed that they can't > use the features of the new phone they bought?

It's been mentioned many times when discussing Apple's rule changes that developers and apps are easily replaceable. If Joe Developer doesn't update his app, it'll just be replaced by another app by another developer.

<comment><USER14> > it might not take long for Adobe to update CS5 and all those developers > could have 4G ready high-res apps in less time than it takes an Objective-C > developers to fire up Photoshop.

Right, because Adobe has always been known for the speed and quality of its updates, especially on the Mac platform.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This seemingly unending speculative rant by the blogosphere will continue until Apple either publishes a concrete set of step by step guidelines, or opens the floodgates. Neither of which will happen, and the process will most likely remain a black box. I am sure that Apple is doing their best to make the process as efficient as balanced as possible, and they do make good when they can - but yes they make mistakes too, it happens when you have a morally biased human process for decision. Yet they simultaneously manage to keep their options open and make a substantial profit, which is not an easy task.</comment>


Slideshows = Future of Internet Communication - <AUTHOR> http://www.adviceter.com

<comment><AUTHOR> We believe slideshows are the future of Internet communication. They force the author to be brief and they are highly engaging, which we believe is a winning formula for most content online. What do you guys think?</comment>


Ask HN: Is Go or Rust a more viable language to learn in 2017? - <AUTHOR> I have a read a heap of articles outlining inherent problems with Golang (https://github.com/ksimka/go-is-not-good), but the problem is you can find people complaining about every language if you type the right thing in google.
What I am confused about is that if it has all these problems, how come it has risen to one of the most popular languages (http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/) jumping 34 positions since 2015.
Rust on the other hand was voted the most beloved language http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2016#technology-most-loved-dreaded-and-wanted . And everyone seems to be saying it's much better then go.
Now obviously they aren't the same language and will be used for the same things, however from my understanding, they CAN be used to achieve similar things.
So basically, if I wanted to build tools/optimizations for web applications (not the whole application it's self) e.g. microservices, custom parsing libraries etc, which one would be best going forward?
Taking into account:
1. Community (e.g. available packages, friendliness)
2. Growth (e.g. how much either is growing)
3. Future outlook (e.g. bust out your crystal balls)
4. Productivity
5. Developer happiness (e.g. who wants to be miserable) <comment><USER2> Given your criteria Go wins easily although HN is a little bit of echo chamber of Rust enthusiasts and Go haters, so you want necessarily get balanced opinion here.

Here's how Go stacks up compared to Rust on axis that I consider important.

1\. Jobs: plenty of jobs in Go (and growing rapidly), almost no jobs with Rust. For example, on [https://angel.co](https://angel.co), there are 67 companies in California with Go jobs (60 with "Golang" skill filter and 7 with "Go" skill filter) and 0 with Rust jobs. Every month in "Who's hiring" thread on HN the same thing: a fair amount of Go jobs, next to nothing of Rust jobs.

I predict number of Go jobs will be growing quickly for some time to come.

2\. Go: easy to learn. Rust: hard to learn.

3\. Go: GC makes memory management easy. Rust: manual memory management and rust-specific for even bigger barrier to entry.

4\. Go: fast to compile. Rust: slow to compile. That contributes to programmer productivity.

5\. Go: both language and fundamental libraries (networking, concurrency, json, xml, databases etc.) are mature and stable.

Rust: language is still evolving. Ecosystem of fundamental libraries is sometimes lacking important stuff, has too many options (which of 3 json libraries should I use) or options are still not mature.

6\. Go: large and growing list of tools, both shipped as part of Go and made by community (debuggers, memory and cpu profilers, race detector, runtime tracing for debugging multi-threading).

Rust: not so much.

7\. Go: a large number of important code-bases are written in Go, proving that it's suitable for large scale software (docker, kubernetes, prometheus, influxdb, tidb, cockroachdb - those are from memory.

Rust: mozilla is dabbling with using Rust for FireFox but I don't know any large project that went full Rust.

8\. Go: used by tens of companies you've heard about ([https://quicknotes.io/n/1XB0](https://quicknotes.io/n/1XB0)).

Rust: the equivalent list for rust will be at least 10x smaller.

At the end of the day proof is in the pudding.

Go is easily winning by pretty much any metric that is not based on opinion. Language X is better than Y is an opinion. Language X has more jobs, more libraries, compiles faster, is used by more companies etc. is not an opinion, it is the pudding.

<comment><USER3> _> Rust: language is still evolving._

The language has been at 1.0 and hence backwards-compatibility for a year and a half. Features are being added, but existing code is stable now, with a similar (or maybe even more strict) compatibility promise to the one Go has.

 _> 6\. Go: large and growing list of tools, both shipped as part of Go and made by community (debuggers, memory and cpu profilers, race detector, runtime tracing for debugging multi-threading)._

 _> Rust: not so much._

This is wrong: Rust can use all the same tooling as C and C++, and they work well. This includes debuggers like gdb and lldb (and, even better, rr), as well as profilers/other things like perf and valgrind. The situation may be a little misleading because Rust doesn't have to reimplement everything like Go, and, furthermore, I don't think having to duplicate work is a good thing.

Additionally, the language itself helps mitigate a lot of bugs for which such tooling is needed. Strong assurances and more automated checking are the pay off of the steeper learning curve and "manual" memory management. (Of course, as you imply, having the compiler be more helpful may not be worth the trade- off for a domain like web apps/microservices.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you need the kinds of things Rust can provide, then it's a very good choice.

However, if you decide Go fits your needs better, in the sense that you want a garbage collected language, then I can't think of any reason to use Go over plenty of better options.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you are trying to make a decision for "from scratch" usage (rather than to find a job), then I'd go with Rust. The main problem is its potentially steep learning curve, which could easily mean not many developers can pick it up.

</comment><comment><USER6> I would say rust, but in 2016 other than operating systems and maybe a few other select areas i dont really want to do manual memory management, GC me baby. I would say go but I don't really want to use a language that leaves about everything else good out even though it has a GC.</comment>


US Denies Atheist Citizenship Unless She Proves She Is a Church Member - <AUTHOR> http://www.christianpost.com/news/us-immigration-office-gives-atheist-seeking-citizenship-until-friday-to-prove-she-is-a-church-member-98365/

<comment><USER2> I have been an atheist since about the age of 12 when I was kicked out of confirmation (Lutheran) for "asking too many questions" as a young teen, I had a lot of questions about Dinosaurs, what young person doesn't, specifically in relation to the story about Noah's ark. I feel for this person at a deep personal level having experienced rejection at a young age for silly reasons. I wish there was some way that I could help her, this is something I feel very deeply about.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not that I don't agree that a moral objection is at least equivalent to a religious one, but what if she agreed to take up _non-lethal_ arms to defend the United States? Would that suffice for the USCIS?

</comment><comment><USER4> Misleading. The real story is that someone wants to be a citizen without being willing to defend the land. That's cowardly, antithetical to the history of our nation, and plain stupid. If you seriously wouldn't grab a pitchfork when someone isn't actively trying to invade our land, than become a citizen of a country that won't be invaded. Sorry, but I don't want a pacifist for a neighbor if some idiots come over and invade us; I want the dude with a bunker and the machine guns.

<comment><USER5> So you would reinstate the draft?

<comment><USER4> No, we're talking about defense of our nation, not a voluntary war.</comment></comment></comment>


Why you're drawn to mobile development - <AUTHOR> http://railspikes.com/2008/10/23/mobile-development

<comment><USER2> I was originally drawn to it because it was resource constrained, and that was a fun challenge. The smallest version of Hecl runs in 74K, and I am working to slim that down. 'Resource constrained' means that 'bullshit walks' in terms of huge, astronaut-oriented architectural beasts. Creating useful code with as little waste as possible was critical, although I think that's changing some. Newer phones are orders of magnitude bigger in terms of memory and storage space.

</comment><comment><USER3> I agree with nearly every point in that article and I particularly like this comment left by Pete Forde,

 _Speaking entirely based on my own opinion, I always thought Facebook apps were slow, not particularly good or interesting or even fun, and in fact just added clutter to a platform I otherwise use every day and adore. iPhone apps on the other hand likely have a stable future that will be measured in terms of years rather than months, simply because it's a closed loop that doesn't rely on dwindling advertising revenues. That it's tied into an iTunes account for consolidated billing is just a home run IMHO._

</comment><comment><USER4> What draws me to mobile development is that I'm tired of being tethered to a PC.

Yes, even laptops.

The iPhone is getting in the ballpark of a mobile form factor I can stand.</comment>


The Accordionist and the value of specifications - <AUTHOR> https://blog.georgovassilis.com/2017/07/22/the-accordionist-and-the-value-of-specifications/ <comment><AUTHOR> Author here: I use the metaphor of an unskilled street musician to describe how, I think, many software delivery centres operate. The realisation that they are KPI-driven shows a way towards successful cooperation with them.</comment>


100 humanoid robots perform synchronized dance routine in Tokyo - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2015/01/20/humanoid-robots-dance-tokyo/ <comment><USER2> *96 humanoid robots</comment>


So... You want your code to be maintainable. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.objectmentor.com/articles/2008/06/24/so-you-want-your-code-to-be-maintainable <comment><USER2> Completely uninsightful, or whatever the opposite of insightful is. I think by now everyone here has heard how great unit tests are and everything. This article brings absolutely nothing new.

I also don't see how unit tests have that much to do with design. Unit testing "proves" in a more or less conclusive way that the implementation conforms to the specification of the program. But there are countless ways to screw up a design big time and still satisfy this objective _correctness_ constraint.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure how having a testing framework leads directly to good design. I know they help show that things aren't broken, but I don't see how they affect the design of the modification.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't know how you guys read that article - are those fonts are set to 1.32px? I have 20/20 vision but jeez... I had to increase the font viewing size _three friggin' times_ to read that article.

As for the content, I don't know why folks aren't okay with it. It's clearly targeted towards newbies - why insist on including "something new"? Newbies need help :)</comment>


A Guide to "Getting" Rumi - <AUTHOR> https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/03/01/rumi-machado-and-co/ <comment><USER2> Rumi was a mystic.

While mystical experiences are very personal, and are highly personalized, there are some broad categories experiences in which they are shared across people who have had them. They are oddly repeatable* even if they are not falsifiable. There are signatures that are in common, and you can recognize them. "Getting" Rumi for me was like this: After my own experiences, I stumbled back across Rumi and it suddenly made sense. I can see what informed his poetry, even across linguistic, religious, and historical lines.

This was the same with Tao Te Ching. What was impenetrably cryptic was suddenly intuitive. Or Zen Koans for that matter.

*They are oddly repeatable even across religious lines, even in cultures that may not have formal religions. It's not religion that makes the mystic.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for your sharing your story. I learned of Rumi through my exposure to non-violent communication (M. Rosenberg) and have already experienced many times a mystic, transcendent moment of empathic connection to others and myself. I find it is something that can be practiced, something you can have at any moment of your life. Rumi's poems come very close to this beauty I have experienced.

<comment><USER2> "The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you; don't go back to sleep" :-D

<comment><USER3> What an honor to receive this present. I am really touched. Thank you from my heart.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> An interesting article on the removal of Islam from the popularized accounts of Rumi:

[http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-erasure-of- is...](http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-erasure-of-islam-from- the-poetry-of-rumi)

<comment><USER5> This reminds me very much of the desacralization of meditation, yoga, and even Buddhism as they are often taught in the West.

The former two in particular are often thought of as nothing more than means for improving one's health or destressing, with little if any appreciation of their religious roots.

<comment><USER6> 'sacred' has had many meanings even in eastern buddhist sects; 'desacralization' had begun long before westernization.

However, there's huge kernel of truth here—Buddhist sects in particular (I can't speak for other uses for meditation; it's a huge area of knowledge) are entire frameworks (or philosophies, if you'd prefer) for how to think about life, and picking and choosing subsets of it will only bring subsets of the rewards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not a fan of Rumi (or poetry in general really), but that Machado poem was incredibly lovely.

<comment><USER5> I didn't like poetry until I took a poetry class at uni, and a talented teacher opened my eyes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe it's my temperament, but I've always "gotten" Rumi. I rather had trouble instead on Sylvia Plath's poetry.

<comment><USER5> I find poetry to be the most personal of the arts. It can take a lot of hunting to find the poet that's just right. My tastes has changed greatly as I've gotten older, too. I can't relate to many of the poets I loved in my youth, and I'm sure the younger me would have found the poets I like now to be ridiculous. Finding poets with whom you resonate can be a life-long treasure hunt.

<comment><USER9> I'll just step in here to advertise a bit. I write poetry, using technical metaphors to convey a lot of the things i think about. Here's an example:

===

In Case of Emergency, Shatter Ego

i am not a process, but the pattern.

i am not a system, but the shape.

i am not a rapid, but the river.

i am not the ocean, but a wake.

i am not the etching, but an image.

i am not the constant, but a rate.

i am not the message, but a relay.

i am not a signal, but the wait.

i am not a digit, but an index.

i am not a value, but a space.

i am not a body, but a person.

i am not a vertex, but a face.

===

If you liked that, here's a whole book full of it:

[https://www.amazon.com/Mechanics-Emotion-Structure- Possibili...](https://www.amazon.com/Mechanics-Emotion-Structure- Possibility/dp/1623751179/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1488490123&sr=8-1&keywords=mechanics+of+emotion)

<comment><USER10> I really enjoyed that, thanks!

These two lines were my favorite:

        i am not a digit, but an index.
        i am not a value, but a space.

And felt like these lines went against the message of the rest:

        i am not the constant, but a rate.
        i am not the message, but a relay

        i am not a vertex, but a face.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article had me until it got to David Bowie. Sorry, but Bowie is no Rumi.

<comment><USER11> I love both Rumi and Bowie but you're right, that was weird. The Machado was a much better fit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I did not see the last "i" before clicking the link.</comment>


Ask HN: What calendar app(s) do you use? - <AUTHOR>

I'm struggling to find a calendar app that isn't tedious to start an event, has too many unnecessary inputs, isn't difficult to see what upcoming events I have, has the ability to view my schedule at a glance, etc etc.  Some days I require a task list and some days I require more of a meeting schedule.  I've tried a few calendar apps (mostly on Android Market) and I end up not using them because they are just lacking for me.<p>What do you use? Any other organizational software you would recommend? <comment><USER2> I'm using Business Calendar by Appgenix Software :) [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=mikado.bizcalp...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=mikado.bizcalpro)

Started using their free application and bought the full version for $0,5 on a promotion :) Fully integrated with Google Calendar (and Google Apps!)

</comment><comment><USER3> Why not Google Calendar?

<comment><USER4> Google Calendar

<comment><USER5> If you use GCal: try this FourSquare combo we hacked together: [https://www.google.com/calendar/render?tab=mc&gadgeturl=...](https://www.google.com/calendar/render?tab=mc&gadgeturl=https://dl.dropbox.com/s/3vs0cm3gv049o4d/quikmeet.xml)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Probably doesn't help you if your using Android, but on iOS, the Agenda app is quite nice. Prior to that I used Easy calendar and Calengoo.</comment>


GNU Screen v4.8 - <AUTHOR> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2020-02/msg00003.html <comment><USER2> Is there any reason to use screen over tmux?

(I really hate posting a comment like this, since it seems poor form to point out a competing project on the release notes of some other project. But screen and tmux are so fundamental to dev workflows that if there's an advantage, I was hoping to know about it.)

<comment><USER3> I personally find that screen tries to do less, and therefore, gets in my way less. Also, emacs-style keybindings fit better with the general interaction model of the shell, which also uses emacs-style keybindings.

I know that one can switch to vim-style keybindings in the shell, but they have never felt as "comfortable" (and I use vim as my daily driver).

Last but not least, the default keybinding for splitting in tmux (C-b ") is just awkward. Screen has way better defaults.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm a tmux man myself, but I'm really glad to see that screen is still being actively maintained.

</comment><comment><USER5> i've been using screen my entire development career. it's a great tool, thank you.

</comment><comment><USER6> FWIW, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 removed screen in favor of tmux.

<comment><USER6> "The screen utility has an old code base that is not easy to maintain and with little activity in the upstream community. The tmux package was viewed as having a better code base to maintain and build new features upon."

[https://access.redhat.com/solutions/4136481](https://access.redhat.com/solutions/4136481)</comment></comment>


Confessions of a Cobol programmer - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9062478&intsrc=hm_ts_head

<comment><AUTHOR> I just saw an ad on dice for a contractor with COBOL/CICS and AMAPS and it was local. 20 years ago there were probably 8 of us with that combo. Am I the only one left? Dare I reply? Naa...I don't even remember where I left my IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.

<comment><USER2> You probably left it just ahead of your WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's hard to believe that I ever worked with something so bad. And that people still do.</comment></comment></comment>


Redis, Memcached, Tokyo Tyrant and MySQL comparision - <AUTHOR> http://www.ruturaj.net/redis-memcached-tokyo-tyrant-mysql-comparison <comment><USER2> It's worth noting that the numbers for MySQL are slightly artificial. In the real world, you would use a relational database and ask it difficult questions that take a lot longer to answer than just getting key/value pairs.

If you just look at the numbers on that page, you would think that Memcached is only 10 times faster than MySQL, but in reality, the speed increase is closer to 100 times or more, because MySQL grows slower the more difficult questions you ask, and the more data you've stored in it. Memcached performance is (almost) independent of the size of the data, and it can only really do one thing, but it does it well.

Then again, if all you're looking to do is to store key/value-pairs, this benchmark is useful.

<comment><USER3> yep it's work to note that at the contrary most Redis higher-level operations like PUSH / POP or even getting a few sorted elements from a ZSet are as fast as GET / SET.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Given the fact that two of the options are persistent and two are in-memory the results seem hardly surprising. What is kind of interesting is that when you look at the results closely you can see what is really being measured - client interface speed. Simply put, there is no way that a tokyo tyrant hash database and a memcached instance should run at the same speed. The former is writing to disk while the latter is not. This means that the bottleneck here is not the cache being "compared", but the client interface code.

If I had the time I would rewrite the client code to use the pytyrant interface talking to an in-memory tyrant hash database to see where things really stack up.

EDIT: If anyone wants to run the benchmarks, just replace the import of memcache in tokyo.py with an import of pytyrant, then replace the run loop with:

        t = pytyrant.PyTyrant.open('10.90.15.96', 1978)
        hashval = md5(str(self.c) + str(i)).hexdigest()
        if self.gs == 'set':
            t[hashval] = hashval
        else:
            t[hashval]

</comment><comment><USER5> Is memcache a substitute for MySQL? I thought memcache was meant to ease off the load on database by caching query results. it's not like comparing apples and oranges, is it?

<comment><USER6> Not really. I haven't seen him saying that they're equivalent in any way. It was more of a "I do a lot of X, which software is the fastest for it".

I think it's a fair comparison, if you ask the question this way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Maybe I don't understand what this article is getting at, but isn't the idea of comparing a relational database, a no-sql database, a caching solution, and a half caching solution/half no-sql database (redis) fundamentally flawed?

It seems a lot like trying to compare apples and oranges.

</comment><comment><USER8> The problem with many of these benchmarks is that they aren't exercising what they think they're exercising.

Notice how tokyo tyrant and memcached track each other on the performance graphs while redis is doing much better? That's because memcached and tokyo tyrant using the same _client_ library. Clearly the memcached client he's using isn't as well written as the redis client he's using.

We in the memcached community are trying to figure out which clients behave properly and describe relative performance between clients so people who read things like this can get a feel for what that actually means in real world applications.

</comment><comment><USER9> The MySQL behavior that was seen (long connect times of unauthenticated users) may happen because MySQL can't do a reverse lookup on the IP. Setting the private ip's in the /etc/hosts file on the MySQL box fixes this problem.

<comment><USER10> Surely this reverse lookup (or failure of lookup) should be cached by MySQL?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I enjoyed the article, and have circulated it internally, but It's a shame that he couldn't run MongoDB reliably- Redis versus MongoDB would have been the most interesting to me.

<comment><USER12> I hope they all get more stable and prosper

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Loved the quote at the end. Go Marathi manoos!</comment>