Show HN: Screely – Instantly turn screenshots into beautiful images - <AUTHOR> https://www.screely.com/ <comment><USER2> This looks like a great idea, so good work. Looking forward to seeing how it develops in the future.

Tangentially, though, I'd love to know how such a simple, half-functional, and clearly proof-of-concept site can garner _almost a thousand_ upvotes on ProductHunt?! I've submitted substantially more complex (and finished) products in the past that have only gotten 5-40 upvotes and like 2 comments a pop. Is it a matter of getting an influencer to post it for you? Does wip.chat help with this? I find it utterly bizarre.

(Yes, I'm jelly.)

<comment><AUTHOR> >Tangentially, though, I'd love to know how such a simple, half-functional, and clearly proof-of-concept site can garner almost a thousand upvotes on ProductHunt?! I've submitted substantially more complex (and finished) products in the past that have only gotten 5-40 upvotes and like 2 comments a pop.

As the others have stated, complexity does not equal value to the user. I think that the simplicity is exactly what people like about it. It doesn't try to do everything, it only does one thing and that makes it easy to use and easy to understand the value proposition.

People on PH and HN are very tolerant of MVP's and understand they won't function perfectly and not have many features. It only does one thing and it does it well in 95% of the cases.

>Is it a matter of getting an influencer to post it for you? Does wip.chat help with this? I find it utterly bizarre.

There is no secret to doing well during your launch (or at least, not that I know of), but it's a combination of lots of smaller variables (timing, luck, optimizing your post and more). As you can see I hunted Screely myself from a relatively new account so I don't think this plays a role.

You are not allowed to ask for upvotes so wip.chat does not help in this way. There are plenty of products that came out of wip.chat that did not do well at all.

However, I think there is a huge amount of value in being part of a community of makers/developers/designers. I have gotten feedback from others during development, they helped me when I got stuck with programming issues and they gave me tips for how I should launch. Wip chat will not magically make your launch do well but it will help you make a product than can do well on it's own.

<comment><USER3> > I think that the simplicity is exactly what people like about it.

I totally agree. I know there's a bitchy comment on the PH about it 'not doing enough', but I think that's ridiculous: your tool is designed to solve one specific task, and it appears to do that very well, so please concentrate on small, incremental polish rather than totally changing the nature of it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I regularly want to share what I've worked on with others on Twitter or Slack/Telegram.

However, sharing a simple screenshot always was a bit too bland for my taste... I wanted to make it look better. Give it a background, put it in a fake window with some shadows etc.

You can do this in Photoshop or Sketch with some templates but that takes a lot of time if you just quickly want to share something with friends or coworkers.

That's why I build Screely. With Screely you can instantly generate a beautiful image from a simple screenshot without needing to dive into Photoshop or Sketch first.

Upload an image, choose your background color and hit that download button so you can share it with others.

I have many more features I want to add like gradient backgrounds, ability to generate an image without the fake window, adjusting the padding and size and much more customization options. But I first wanted to ship the MVP and get some feedback from others and hear their opinions.

PS. I only started to learn programming pretty recently so if you find a bug or something weird. Let me know and I'll try to fix it as fast as possible!

<comment><USER4> > I wanted to make it look better. Give it a background, put it in a fake > window with some shadows etc.

Interesting, I'm the complete opposite. When I make or receive a screenshot I want to crop down to the focal point.

One of the best IT investments ${BIGCORP} made when I worked for them was to install SnagIt on every user's machine. Suddenly their documents had neat, inline cropped screenshots instead of huge one-per-page full-screen dumps. Saving in storage costs alone must have paid for that deployment.

And our bug reports became much easier to triage since the users just included an image of the problematic field, instead of the whole screen with a comment 'see error'. Where?!

<comment><AUTHOR> Reporting bugs and sharing designs on social media or in chat with friends or co-workers are very different use cases though. Screely is aimed at making the latter easier, SnagIt fixed the first one for you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> On mac: <CMD> \+ <Shift> \+ <4> then pressing <space> will allow you to select a window for screenshot which includes the window border, title, and transparent shadow.

<comment><USER6> Hold <option> while clickling the window to remove the shadow.

Hold <control> while clicking to skip the desktop and copy it to the clipboard directly.

<comment><USER7> Never ceases to amaze me the options (no pun intended) that OS X developers put hidden in the simplest of system apps. Makes them so versatile.

I remember as a stupid middle-schooler thinking I was being cool showing everyone how many <option>/<control>/<cmd> key combos there are to take the perfect PhotoBooth shot.

PSA: Reminder – option click _everything_ for nice surprises.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks useful, congrats on the launch!. One thing, since the page says you're not uploading images to your server(s) - you might want to rename the "Upload the screenshot" button to something that reflects that. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hadn't even thought about that!

Replacing it by something like 'insert' does not feel accurate either but I'm not a native english speaker. Is there any synonym to 'upload' or 'insert' that would make more sense in this case and make it clear that everything is handled client-side?

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I think "Select Your Screenshot" or "Choose Your Screenshot" would be great options.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I might be old school but it always seems very dubious for me to rely on a web server controled by who the f... know for such basic task that can be done more efficiently offline.

And also why is it free? Can we be sure the service won't store every image send? Would be a nice way to gather free real word training example for a neural network so it can learn what frame contain nothing useful and what frame contain login/password. Because we can be sure that someone WILL send out login/password while network protocol will gladly be giving their good old IP adresse along...

<comment><USER11> That's oddly specific, I am sure you have 100x better way to harvest passwords. Like run a free proxy server.

<comment><USER10> It depends on what is your target. No enterprise will tolerate that their employees set up a proxy (and even so clever employees are not the target).

However I've seen a lot of people using free web based tool to replace pretty basic dumb stuff such as assembling pdf.

Would'nt it be nice for a concurrent company to buy all pdf assembled by your employees using this web service based on company IP?

Of course nerd might find out that pdf is uploaded (most probably however he will use offline FOSS solution because he know better). But the basic employee that use this « because someone send them a link to this awesome tool » will never even thought of it...

I have no proof this scheme is used by scammers, but it seems highly plausible to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> OSX/macOS has already been doing this for me for quite some time. I always try to frame my screenshots to look fairly "presentable." E.g.: [https://i.imgur.com/rozu1Do.png](https://i.imgur.com/rozu1Do.png)

Edit: I figure my comment probably comes off a bit negative. I think this is a cool service and I would likely use it if there were an API available. Props to coming up with a neat little app to develop and bring to the public...simple ideas like this are hard to come by and stick to.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your clarification. MacOS might solve your need for making screenshots look presentable but there are still many situations where it doesn't solve the problem (e.g. only showing a small section of a page instead of the full window, people using Windows/Ubuntu or mobile devices). That's what I am aiming to solve with Screely.

I also want to add many more features to Screely that MacOS can't do such as gradient backgrounds, custom image backgrounds with company logo, tweet this image and much more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is great! I've wasted so much time in the past doing this manually in Sketch.

We're planning to release some major features for EnvKey[1] over the next few weeks, and so we'll be putting a lot of new screenshots up on the marketing site. I look forward to giving it a run through at that point and hopefully saving lots of time. I'm happy to give feedback on the process. Congrats on making something useful!

1 - [https://www.envkey.com](https://www.envkey.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, I'm glad to like it!

Looking forward to seeing the new screenshots. If you run into any problems or have feedback, just send me a message.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am trying to figure out what's the value of this additional fake window around the screenshot. Could you describe any valid use case, please?

<comment><USER15> I was thinking the same, but I think it's mainly for prototyping. You have a design that will eventually end up inside a window frame, and you want to show how it might look, before it's actually implemented. I hope that's the purpose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Am I the only one who prefers the "naked" screenshot ([https://www.screely.com/img/before3.png](https://www.screely.com/img/before3.png)) over the one with gimmicks? ([https://www.screely.com/img/after3.png](https://www.screely.com/img/after3.png))

The gimmicks blow up the file size (especially when/if they add an alpha channel only for the shadow) and don't look better in every scenario.

I think such decoration should be applied when neccessary, for instance with CSS within a website.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is really awesome! I will definitely use this. Congratulations on the launch :D Do you plan on allowing someone to add a text overlay in the future? That would really help. I really want to make screenshots that look kind of like this: [https://s3.amazonaws.com/shopify-app- store/61a672cfd4a83c1ba...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/shopify-app- store/61a672cfd4a83c1bac075d69847cd757/screenshot/41007/original.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, glad to hear you will use it!

There are no plans for adding text overlay in the immediate future but I will keep your suggestion in mind for future development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I thought this meant the opposite – I often take screenshots on my phone and wish to trim the screen decorations before sharing.

</comment><comment><USER19> At those "done feature list" you should add:

\- tray icon enabled native app for all big three

Nothing would make this stick faster than just having to press a key combo (like we already do in Windows with alt+prtscr) and have it pop an image link in front of me to paste/use wherever I want.

<comment><USER20> The trouble with native apps is that unless you open source, no-one trusts them anymore.

I have 100's of small tools a bit like Screenly et al., that I have written over the years for Windows, but because I wont open source them, people just wont download them, so there's no point releasing.

We're in a really sad place now software-wise, where all the little developers (like me) can no longer release freeware or shareware without someone accusing it of being riddled with malware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Nice work, and congratulations! I have a suggestion for you: create a Slack plugin, so you can type /screely and then a URL (or even cooler, if you could drag and drop) and it returns a converted image you can choose to post, a la /gifs plugin.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Have gotten a couple of similar requests already so it seems like people want to make it easier to integrate this into one's workflow.

If that's a Slack plugin, browser extension or something I don't know yet but I'm definitely going to focus on this area in future development of the product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Fancy feature request: Let me change the OS to even retro ones, like Win95 or OS/2 :)

</comment><comment><USER23> Windows does that natively, with Alt+PrintScreen.

Some Linux distros also support that out of the box.

<comment><USER24> Apologies for the pedantry in advance, but Linux distros probably don't support that. It's the desktop manager / window manager doing that for you.

<comment><USER23> You are absolutely correct. I actually was going to write WM, but then I realized that it might be incorrect, I didn't actually know if it was the WM or additional software. So I said the distros do it, since it would be inaccurate but not incorrect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Cool stuff!

I built this much more limited Chrome extension to save our designer's sanity (from frequent requests from marketing) a few years ago. Works well enough.

[https://jmartin.ca/screenshot-chrome/](https://jmartin.ca/screenshot-chrome/) [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/standardized- scree...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/standardized- screenshot/pabdhaakclnechgfhmnhkcbmjobeoope)

<comment><USER26> Thanks. But this doesn't work for me :( Even in incognito mode with no other extensions enabled, I get this error:

"For best results, don't mouse over the page during capture and set "Actual Size" from the "View" menu. Your finished image will open in a new window.

Uh oh, something went wrong! Try reloading the page and running this again."

In case you're interested, I'm running Chrome on Linux. chrome://version says '64.0.3282.186 (Official Build) (64-bit)'

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Congratulations on the release.

In "Coming Soon", do the lines with strikethrough mean that the feature has been implemented or removed from the plans?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

The strikethrough means the feature has been implemented and I'm working on the next one.

<comment><USER3> A green tick or similar alongside each item (in addition to the strikethrough, I think) would probably convey positivity less ambiguously. (FWIW, I understood it to mean 'feature has been implemented', but that's clearly not everyone's experience!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I first thought that the idea was to lend "fake credibility" to an image, by making it seem like the output from an application.

But I guess the main idea must be prototyping, and to show off how a particular design might look in the end, once implemented as part of an application.

</comment><comment><USER28> Killer feature of all screenshot webapps: paste. Meaning, I should be able to paste an image on my clipboard to your app and have it generate. Snag.gy ([https://snag.gy/](https://snag.gy/)) does this well.

<comment><AUTHOR> This has been requested a lot after launching so will work in adding this in the future.

Thanks for your feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Suggestion: an effect like the one Amazon uses on their blog/docs about AWS. I'm on mobile now, but if you don't know what I'm talking about I'll find an example.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you mean something like this? [https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws- iot-1-click-use-simple-...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-iot-1-click- use-simple-devices-to-trigger-lambda-functions/)

The solid black border around the image?

<comment><USER29> No, I mean the effect shown on these [https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon- aurora-backtrack-tur...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-aurora- backtrack-turn-back-time/) notice the effect can appear on any and every border.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I don't see any fake window? Has that been disabled?

<comment><AUTHOR> It has definitely not been disabled! Could you tell me what browser and OS you are using?

<comment><USER31> Happening here too; on Firefox/Win10.

Something that seems unrelated is that, in your drawWindow function you seem to be assigning an onload handler and then immediately overwriting it with a different onload handler. This is not really the problem, but I mention it just so you know.

Now, the actual problem seems to be there's a long standing bug in Firefox where it won't draw SVG to neither canvas nor Image elements if they don't have a proper width and height set (and it seems it has to be pixel based, a percentage width/height won't work either). I've just tried adding it to the <svg> template string you have in drawWindow and it does seem to solve the problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for letting me know and also looking into it!!

Was able to quickly fix this issue thanks to you! I've just pushed the fix to production so it should be fixed now. Would you mind testing it one more time to check if it works?

<comment><USER31> Yes. It works now :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good to hear! :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What about «Select your Screenshot»?

<comment><USER8> Gah, my prev comment was placed wrong (fat fingers on the phone)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Have you thought about integrating with Sharex?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think we spoke earlier about this on Drift, but just to be sure you get a reply if that was someone else..

I don't have any immediate plan for integrating with Sharex but I am thinking about making a chrome extensions to make it easier to integrate into your workflow. So you can immediately open a new screenshot in Screely.

Will keep your suggestion in mind for future development!

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is a really cool use of canvas, nice! :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. It's been fun learning about <canvas> and doing everything client- side!</comment></comment>


FiveThirtyEight: Why Our Model Is More Bullish Than Others on Trump - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-update-why-our-model-is-more-bullish-than-others-on-trump/ <comment><AUTHOR> TLDR:

 _Assumption No. 1: The high number of undecided and third-party voters indicates greater uncertainty. ... If we tweaked our model so that it only considered the number of days left until the election when calculating uncertainty, Trump's chances would decline to 10 percent, while Clinton's would rise to 90 percent.

Assumption No. 2: The FiveThirtyEight model is calibrated based on general elections since 1972. ... If we calibrated the model based on presidential elections since 2000 only — which have featured largely accurate polling — Clinton's chances would rise to 95 percent, and Trump's would fall to 5 percent.

Assumption No. 3: The FiveThirtyEight model uses a t-distribution with "fat tails," which gives a greater likelihood of rare events. ... If we used normal distributions instead of t-distributions, Clinton's chances in polls-only would rise to 87 percent from 85 percent, while Trump's would fall to 13 percent.

Assumption No. 4: State outcomes are highly correlated with one another, so polling errors in one state are likely to be replicated in other, similar states. ... If we assumed that states had the same overall error as in the FiveThirtyEight polls-only model but that the error in each state was independent, Clinton's chances would be … 99.8 percent, and Trump's chances just 0.2 percent._</comment>


25 Free Checklists Collection for Startuppers - <AUTHOR> http://startupmate.flammate.com/25-printable-checklists-for-your-business/?ref=producthunt <comment><USER2> Can only access with Facebook Messenger?</comment>


Slack's error page has a forest scene with interactive pigs and chickens - <AUTHOR> https://anything.slack.com/archives/intentionally/broken <comment><USER2> Really disappointed that I couldn't get the pigs to jump across the floating platforms. Maybe I didn't do it right?</comment>


All References to Climate Change Have Been Deleted from the White House Website - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/read/all-references-to-climate-change-have-been-deleted-from-the-white-house-website <comment><USER3> I think the headline is a little wrong or maybe I am misreading it. It's not the case that someone went to the website and deleted climate change references; but rather, there is a new web site which doesn't have any references.

As the article itself says :

> To reiterate: It is normal that the site is completely new; it is notable > that climate change is not mentioned on any one of Trump's new pages

<comment><USER4> Thanks for pointing this out, I missed it on my first read-through. The framing of this article implies that the Trump administration scrubbed the references first thing rather than roll out their new version which had no references to climate change.

I'm as ready as half the country to despise this administration but I'll save my outrage for things that are actually malicious.

<comment><USER5> The act of replacing the website is normal, but the content of the replacement is malicious.

<comment><USER4> How do you define malicious in this context? I see the content (from summaries, I haven't read it) as 100% self-consistent for the Trump administration.

<comment><USER5> It is, and the Trump administration's position on the climate is malicious, in that it will cause harm to the majority of humanity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I did some digging.

$ wget --execute="robots = off" \--mirror --convert-links --no-parent www.whitehouse.gov

$ grep -rl climate

the-press-office/2011/09/20/president-obama-participate-linkedin-town-hall- mountain-view-california-

the-press-office/2011/09/21/remarks-president-obama-and-president-clinton- clinton-global-initiative

the-press-office/2011/02/28/presidential-proclamation-50th-anniversary-peace- corps

joiningforces

1600/first-ladies/mamieeisenhower

1600/first-ladies/louhoover

The first three are press releases from 2011, so they're old. The fourth result "joiningforces" has this at the top of the page "This is historical material "frozen in time". The website is no longer updated and links to external websites and some internal pages may not work."

The other two pages are duds, because they're just talking about the climate as in "it's a nice climate".

So yep, no references to climate change _whatsoever_

<comment> lloyd-christmas Sadly, it's directly mentioned on this page.

[https://www.whitehouse.gov/america-first- energy](https://www.whitehouse.gov/america-first-energy)

<comment><USER7> It's a shame that there's not a single mention of renewable, solar, wind, or nuclear, but coal and oil are mentioned multiple times each.

<comment><USER8> Trump is anti wind power.

[https://www.google.com/amp/s/thinkprogress.org/amp/p/bd4acf3...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/thinkprogress.org/amp/p/bd4acf3264d?client=safari)

<comment><USER9> And his cabinet is by and large anti-everything-which-is-not-fossil-fuels.

<comment><USER10> I was of the understanding that he was pro-nuclear.

<comment><USER11> Nuclear is very good for the environment as long as it's done right. Besides the initial building costs and maintenance, it is a much better deal than most other ways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Whitehouse.gov was archived to [https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/](https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/) at noon. It looks like they've done a reasonable job with redirects from old URLs to the archives sites. (Hopefully forever)

Not quite the mantra of 'Cool URLs don't change', but a reasonable compromise for making something that the non-technical public can understand.

<comment><USER9> Some of the documents are missing though, the cabinet's exit memos are gone: [https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/administration/cabinet/...](https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/administration/cabinet/exit- memos)

<comment><USER13> Maybe they were still restoring the data at that time? Few links that I clicked on that page worked for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As someone who lives in South Florida it's bad enough we have to deal with Rick Scott denying rising sea tides in his own back yard.

Now we're up against a POTUS who denies the disaster we will face in twenty years yet owns property in the afflicted area (North Miami Beach - <USER2> Towers). As I watch the city raise the sidewalks and roads by a foot I'm astounded. I've lived here for three years and since I got here every major roadway has been under construction - installing pumps to return flood water back to the bay. When I first arrived, you couldn't cross the street without steeping ankle deep into water and it's getting better. But pumps were only installed in key areas that affected the Mayor's and his friends' commercial properties.

I cannot buy property here because to do so would be a huge mistake considering what is now beach front will be underwater unless something is done about it.

<comment><USER15> Twenty years?

<comment><USER16> Global temperature will rise enough to disrupt the global food supply somewhere between 20 and 50 years from now. The catastrophe will be seen in famine and war over resources, not in higher flood insurance cost and taxes to pay for levees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> EVERYTHING has been scrubbed from the site, it would appear, because there is a new administration taking over.

<comment><USER9> It was quite surprising as I deref'd a link to the Obama administration's exit memos at just that point, but the site is apparently archived at [https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/](https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/) (though not entirely, the page linking to the exit memos is there[0] but the link is dead)

[0] [https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/administration/cabinet/](https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/administration/cabinet/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Some reports even claim that President Obama himself has been replaced by a completely different person!

</comment><comment><USER19> I said it on election day and I'll say it again. Sorry kids, we fucked up. Making billionaires even richer is more important than keeping the Earth livable. Trump doesn't care, he'll be dead before the ice caps finish melting and we start seeing just how badly we're screwed. All that matters in the big race is winning, and winning is measured in dollars.

<comment><USER20> This has nothing to do with Trump or the election though. Mankind is screwing up in general and having some text on whitehouse site is not going to change it.

Look at the startup scene. It's all about convenience (ignoring the massive amount of wasted resources), social media is all about endless narcissism and then we have everything handed out free by mining your data. All this is not going to change. All this mindless self-gratifying churn is what worsens the climate.

<comment><USER5> Really, Rick Perry and Scott Pruitt have nothing to do with Trump or the election? "eliminating harmful and unnecessary policies such as the Climate Action Plan" and "reviving America's coal industry" have nothing to do with Trump and the election?

[https://www.whitehouse.gov/america-first- energy](https://www.whitehouse.gov/america-first-energy)

<comment><USER20> If anything it just worsens the climate faster than the current rate. Climate is going down regardless of who is in power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Every paragraph on that page scares the heck out of me.

Take these two:

 _President Trump is committed to eliminating harmful and unnecessary policies such as the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the U.S. rule._

 _The Trump Administration is also committed to clean coal technology, and to reviving America's coal industry, which has been hurting for too long._

May God help America!

</comment><comment><USER8> He said it was a hoax. But we were told to take him seriously not literally.

</comment><comment><USER22> Why Is this flagged Mods? This pattern of flagging political stories is totally against what the Ycombinator community stands for

</comment><comment><USER23> If car exhaust isn't harmful to people and the planet, close the White House windows and pump that shit in cowboy!

</comment><comment><USER24> Why is that link flagged?

<comment><USER25> I suspect the HN members who've done so believe that the resulting discussion would produce more flames than illumination.</comment></comment>


Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility - <AUTHOR> http://credibility.stanford.edu/guidelines/index.html

<comment><USER2> How about don't use Silverlight for your video?[1] That might do something for your credibility. Nobody, absolutely nobody, would seriously choose Silverlight over the alternatives without being offered inducements from Microsoft.

Edit: Also the link at the top of the page when you click on the "Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab" goes to <http://www.captology.org/> which fails instead of <http://captology.stanford.edu/> I think they are violating some of their rules with that one.

[1] [http://see.stanford.edu/see/lecturelist.aspx?coll=63480b48-8...](http://see.stanford.edu/see/lecturelist.aspx?coll=63480b48-8819-4efd-8412-263f1a472f5a)

<comment><USER3> To be fair about the broken link, it does say at the bottom: "Updated June, 2002"

<comment><AUTHOR> To be fair the site doesn't comply with guideline number 9:

 _Update your site's content often (at least show it's been reviewed recently)._

But it's ok anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article is from 2002. I wonder what the percentage of modern startups don't try to meet these guidelines (particularly the ones involving showing physical addresses and details of real humans behind the site)

It'd be interesting to see whether any more recent a/b testing gave any indications on whether they still make any difference...

<comment><USER5> I'm always confused as to why so many websites from the US don't provide some sort of physical address, a name, a telephone number, even only a email address. Maybe I'm spoilt because it's actually against the law in Germany to not provide name, address, telephone number and email address on your website (you can either put it on every page or put a link to the page with this information on every page) but to me it just seems impolite, unprofessional, even scammy if you don't.

<comment><USER6> Well depends

If it is just a blog, then they might prefer the privacy.

<comment><USER5> I've seen my fair share of websites from businesses without so much as a hint as to who is behind it. It's not as though I expect every blog to provide the address of the author.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Perhaps the site is trying to set a negative example, so it might be learned from?

Also peculiar, if it hasn't been updated in eight years, why is it using silverlight? [And regarding <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1606292> \-- that lack of awareness could be considered a bug of silverlight's linux plugin itself.]

</comment><comment><USER8> I had decided the weird indentation of bullets 5 & 7 was too small to mention - until I got to recommendation #10.</comment>


Future of the library - Seth Godin - <AUTHOR> http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/05/the-future-of-the-library.html <comment><USER2> Real URL without top frame:

[http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/05/the- future-o...](http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/05/the-future-of- the-library.html)

<comment><USER3> Looks like this submitter might need an education:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=aghilmort>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As far as the user-interface of printed books are concerned there is a very minimal, and understandable, set of features:

        - it boots instantly
        - has a high contrast and high resolution display
        - is viewable from any angle, in bright or dim light
        - permits fast random access to any page
        - provides instant visual and tactile feedback on the location
        - can be easily annotated
        - requires no batteries or maintenance.

Current e-Readers cannot meet all of these specifications.

Books do a great job of conveying static information; computers let information change. In my opinion, the local library will continue to exist as a place of knowledge if it can evolve to provide the tools to access changing/shared information. Otherwise, it'll just end up being a quiet place for students to work.

<comment><USER5> My preferred way to read is to have a physical and digital copy. The digital goes wherever I go, on my laptop and iPad, and is easily searched with a query string. The physical stays at home, and has all of the advantages you mention. I love having both, and feel handicapped if I only have one. But it's still not ideal...

\</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

I envision a future where we'll have the best of both worlds; a physical book with double-sided e-ink pages. The front cover is a touch-screen running iBooks, letting you swipe around to find something to read. Touch it, and all of the e-ink pages instantly display the book.

Now you can easily flip through it like a normal book, far faster than an iPad. Text-searching is a breeze, impossible with a paper book. Using your stylist, mark pages with notes, highlight them, do whatever. A small microphone lets you record audio notes, tied to a passage of text. Everything saves and syncs to the cloud, following you wherever you go.

Errata auto-downloads and updates your books as needed. A small camera, integrated into the hard-cover lip that extends above each page, tracks your eye-movements and watches what you read, looking at facial expressions and pupil dilations, to determine what you found most important. In the future if some information it saw you read is wrong, you'll get an auto-email or tweet telling you about it.

Every paragraph in the book will be connected to a community-discussion board, where you read and ask for clarification regarding confusing text, similar to djangobook.com. It's a social reading experience, letting the community at- large make comprehension easier.

Physically the e-ink Book comes in many different sizes, from small and pocket-sized, to large and biblical. Text auto-adjusts, similar to the Kindle. Battery life is measured in months. Embedded video, audio, and animation is common.

Something like that will kill paper books and e-readers, since it marries the best of both worlds.

</comment><comment><USER6> _The librarian isn't a clerk who happens to work at a library. A librarian is a data hound, a guide, a sherpa and a teacher. The librarian is the interface between reams of data and the untrained but motivated user._

It's really refreshing to read this -- my wife is a librarian, and when she tells people that she has a Masters degree in library science, people will literally scoff and say things like "why do you need a Masters degree for that?" As a whole, it's a disrespected profession, not just because people look down it, but because most people think it's irrelevant. (At least teachers, who are shit on even more than librarians, are relevant in everyone's eyes.)

 _And to teach them how to use a soldering iron or take apart something with no user servicable parts inside._

He lost me here, is he really suggesting that modern libraries need to become vocational training centers?

</comment><comment><USER7> The constant references to 'dead paper' belie the denials that Mr. Godin is not anti-book. Of course he is. And with that blind spot in his perspective he misses a number of advantages found only in a library. I've been wandering up and down the aisles of libraries since just after I learned to read. The number of things that I read that were not on any particular list is countless. Bit hard to do with a search engine. And there is no point in even trying to describe the problem of the enormous number of books not yet digitized. Does anyone seriously think that just because a book is 'old' that it's contents have no value? Most of the necessary and important books on both chess and weaving (to name to disparate subjects) are 'old' and for the most part are not available in digital versions. I guess in Mr. Godin's universe we throw all of that away and start over. Small aside---did you know that there is a library with over a 100k volumes on chess? These are just some of the holes in his arguments that occur to me as a book-lover and library-fan...

<comment><USER8> A book is not defined by being made of paper. Godin is pro-book but recognizes that the future of the book is as a digital file.

I don't think anyone is arguing that there is a continuing role for librarians who act as archivists of valuable paper books. But that number of librarians is vastly less than the number currently in existence.

Librarians who refuse to give up paper books are like record shops who refused to give up vinyl. Sure, a few will stick around--but the vast majority will have to move on.

<comment><USER6> _Librarians who refuse to give up paper books are like record shops who refused to give up vinyl._

You write this as though the "physical vs. digital" battle has long been fought and won. The reality is that the landscape has barely begun to be fleshed out among libraries, and despite that, libraries are already adjusting their budgets to accommodate the inevitable sea change. The stereotype of the stubborn librarian in sensible shoes and tweed, clutching her Emily Bronte and refusing to acknowledge the existence of digital books, just doesn't represent the mainstream position among librarians.

<comment><USER9> Nor does that view generally represent reality. Quite a few libraries are fighting _for_ digital version of books to be allowed for lending and the publishers are pushing back. In some cases if a library has a digital copy they can only lend it out to a single person at at time, and are only allowed to purchase a single copy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> While on the whole I agree with much of what Seth is saying (the library is basically a warehouse of old books) I don't think the library itself as we see it today is going anywhere or will change in any significant way until e-books become far more prevalent than they are right now.

<comment><USER10> With an online library how are you going to "serendipitously" find new books from other domains you don't know you're interested in?

I remember when I was 14 or 15, I was going to our small-town's public library once every 2 days or so, I was reading all the SF books I could find. The thing is that the SF books shelf was just after the history books shelf, and, even though I liked history, I never would have thought of reading history books if it weren't for me passing in front of that history books shelf each and every time.

<comment><USER11> _With an online library how are you going to "serendipitously" find new books from other domains you don't know you're interested in?_

Google could handle this with "I'm Feeling Lucky." I seem to remember delicious.com doing something like this. How about a serendipity web app that tries to figure out/crowdsource what you never knew you'd be interested in?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> We worry about this in my library. I believe the ultimate problem is that the value of a librarian does not scale very well and incumbent librarians don't necessarily have the skills or life experiences to pull it off. From my experience, short of working with PhDs, very few librarians actually perform complex tasks. So you have highly skilled laborers answering mundane reference questions all day.

I predict most academic libraries will cease to exist and be replaced with large computer labs and study halls, with their electronic resources managed by IT departments and daily operations (circulation, interlibrary loan, copy cataloging) performed by work-study students and paraprofessionals.

</comment><comment><USER13> It seems to me there's a harmonious intersection between this idea of the library, and the non-Prussian-schooling approaches. Get enough of the non- Prussian-schoolers and an open-minded librarian together in one place armed with the right equipment, and this sort of stuff could just almost spontaneously start happening.

</comment><comment><USER14> I struggled reading past the "Netflix is a better librarian" comment. Netflix is not a librarian, it is a library-like PLACE. Netflix probably hires librarians or information professionals trained in librarianship to organize their data and user experience. The public library system is only one of many endpoints for a library trained information-professional. For the past decade library schools have been re-branding as iSchools; producing UX/HCI professionals who go on to work at places like Netflix (hence the "Netflix is a library-like PLACE"). In the interest of full disclosure I am currently getting a PhD at an iSchool so I have a different understanding of the social categories "librarian" and "library." Even so, as every schoolboy knows, a thing cannot be a librarian. IT'S PEOPLE, NETFLIX IS MADE OF PEOPLE.

</comment><comment><USER15> Libraries aren't going anywhere. I think they will transition from relatively large storage place facility physical books, to a hub for study. It's already happened, really. All my collegiate library studying took place via online databases like EBSCOhost, but this much is pretty obvious. What is more obscure, and will be more interesting to see is how the library evolves culturally in the coming years.

<comment><USER16> I think this is an important function of libraries too. It's a nice quiet place and with enough work room to read and relax. With that said, other than at Universities, I doubt many people think that's a valuable thing. The value of libraries is hard to quantify and in policy discussion that's not a good thing for libraries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> What about the people who don't have a computer (much less Netflix or a Kindle) at home? 40% of American households have no broadband, and 18% have no internet access at all. They can take a book home with them, and they don't need a computer or an internet connection to use it.

<comment><USER13> Read it again, more carefully. You've made an unjustified assumption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I agree with him... if the librarian exists online and not in an old building 5 miles away. And kids have computers. That's not enough to lure them to a library. Many libraries have Wiis and Xboxes these days. That's not working either.

<comment><USER19> Seriously? Do you have an article that talks about game consoles in a library?

<comment><USER18> <http://www.aadl.org/aadlgt>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's Monday, and it's early, so I read half of that wondering why Seth Godin was writing for Reddit :-/</comment>


Calculus Series: A Technique to Replace Substitution and Integration by Parts - <AUTHOR> https://mathvault.ca/integration-overshooting-method <comment><USER2> The title is overoptimistic. This only work if you have a good understanding of the of the function to have a good enough guess of the integral.

There are many integration methods that use guess or try to explote the similarity of the integral with the integral of a simpler function. Relevant xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/2117/](https://xkcd.com/2117/)

In particular, this method use some intuitive version of substitutions, i.e. the integral of f(3x+5) is somewhat similar to g(3x+5), for any 3x+5 out there. I strongly recommend to study the usual substitution method to get enough enlightenment.

Integration by parts is more tricky. It is useful in a lot of elemental cases, and has a lot of applications in advanced mathematic and physics, but I still didn't reach the enlightenment phase.

You can try to ignore integration by parts if it's not in the midterm, but substitution is too important to be ignored.</comment>


Ask HN: Weather forecast in your email daily - <AUTHOR> The problem: When I wake up, I check my email. Then I get ready. By the time I wonder what the weather is and look it up, it feels like I've missed the opportunity to prepare for it (ideal time to prepare: As I'm getting ready for work).
I want to get a simple email everyday with the weather for the day and an hourly or every 4 hour forecast so I can see if it will get cooler or hotter as the day goes. Any rain.
I don't want any ads or too much information, just a simple highs/lows and a forecast...similar to weathertron (http://media.148apps.com/screenshots/660925162/us-iphone-1-weathertron-live-rain-snow-clouds-and-temperatures.jpeg)
Is there anything that already exists like this?
Solutions I've tried: - Weather apps: On firing up the app, takes a few milliseconds to fetch the weather. ( I find this annoying for some reason).
- Google calendar which shows the weather each day, but I don't view my calendar in the morning as I get a daily email about my appts for the day in my inbox.
- Saw the free weather in your email sites: lots of ads in the email. I understand it's a free service so ads make sense but I find them distracting.
I'd interested in how other HNers have hacked this issue. <comment><USER2> Sunshine delivers exactly what you are looking for on iOS. You set up a time and a location (like, 7:30am, for "Work address") and you will receive a notification in the morning that describes the weather for you. It takes into account your personal comfort zone (what temperature range feels comfortable to you) and uses your Work address instead of just your current location.

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sunshineo/id959396618?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sunshineo/id959396618?mt=8)

And more info on [https://thesunshine.co](https://thesunshine.co)

</comment><comment><USER3> IFTTT supports weather data: [https://ifttt.com/recipes/search?q=weather](https://ifttt.com/recipes/search?q=weather)

Or you could find a weather RSS feed and put that in an RSS2email service?

</comment><comment><USER4> This already exists: poncho.is</comment>


Ask HN: Hacker in need of ideas? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a hacker, currently employed at a start-up that has finally become break-even.
Now that I have some free-time I am itching to work on interesting things on the side, but alas I have no good ideas.
Where can I get some?
Is there a good place to get paired with people who have ideas or need help? <comment><USER2> One of the things I wish I had is a "white-list" credit card. I suggested to the folks at Square (via their email suggestions, never got a response) that this might be a useful adjacent market for them.

The concept is pretty simple, use the existing payments structure which is built around credit cards and create a card that 'cannot' be used for fraud. The latter bit requires some clarification.

So in my use case, I've got vendors who I would like to establish a long term relationship, whether it's a subscription to the WSJ, or a my App Store credit card on file. I give them a credit card number and they keep it on file, I periodically buy services/products from them, and everything is great until my credit card gets compromised some how and then I have to go unwind all of these arrangements with a new card number. Even when I use a 'special' card just for subscription services (easier for me to monitor) if someone breaks into one of my vendors databases "just for the lulz" and my details get out then I still have to go change all my numbers. Its a fact of life but it is also a pain point for me.

What I would like is to have a payments system where I could give the vendor a "credit card" and they could authorize it for transactions. That would send me a text which says "they want to authorize" and if I respond appropriately the relationship is set up. Now if that number gets compromised, the person who gets it can't use it for hotel reservations or 100 pizzas because it isn't authorized to make purchases anywhere except for the vendors where I pre- established a relationship.

Basically getting my card compromised at the LOLCatz shopping cart portal doesn't give the attacker any power other than to spend more than I would expect to spend at the LOLCatz store. My life gets better, the credit card company has less fraud exposure, and I no longer have 'change the card everywhere' firedrills.

As a bonus if this credit card front end could be attached to other payment sources "behind the wall" as it were (imagine having a credit card number that had properties like a Google Voice phone number, it could draw from multiple sources to pay out.) Then I could do even better by attaching 'dubious' cards to an account with a limited withdrawal rate.

I would love to be in charge of my credit like that and I have a much better view over what is, and is not, an attempt at fraud (presuming of course that I am not the fraudster).

I wish some bright YC group somewhere would build something like this.

<comment><USER3> That already exists. It's called a corporate purchasing card. I used to sell new Fortune 500 accounts when I worked at American Express, so I'm quite familiar with them.

You can set myriad fine-grained controls like "only permit Office Depot purchases of paper reams, Monday thru Friday, in zip code 94304, $40 maximum per use." Stuff like that.

The account administrator gets a granular data feed with all the purchases pre-categorized, and reconciliation and reporting software.

The trouble competitors have is gathering the data at the point of sale. American Express blows away the competition on data, primarily because of card readers. Many American Express merchants have a separate card reader which can be programmed to force the merchant to filter transactions based on the controls set on the cardholder's account. Many companies won't buy from suppliers who aren't fully set up for American Express purchasing cards, which is why so many suppliers go through the trouble of uploading their product database and paying the high transaction fees.

<comment><USER2> That's great, except that I don't want this for my corporation, I want it for me, John Q. Public.

Its not the concept that is disruptive, its opening up the market to a much larger base of consumers.

This "The trouble competitors have is gathering the data at the point of sale. American Express blows away the competition on data, primarily because of card readers. Many American Express merchants have a separate card reader which can be programmed to force the merchant to filter transactions based on the controls set on the cardholder's account. Many companies won't buy from suppliers who aren't fully set up for American Express purchasing cards, which is why so many suppliers go through the trouble of uploading their product database and paying the high transaction fees." is so true in meat space and doesn't need to be true on the Internet. 'Readers' are as sophisticated as the shopping cart software needs them to be.

The value adds here are:

1) This gives individuals control over their exposure by sharing credit cards with these vendors.

2) This mitigates fraud / change on those accounts which for consumer cards is a huge part of the expense.

3) This creates an exemplar of a payments system which is more buyer focussed and thus differentiates from existing payment services.

<comment><USER3> Ok I thought you were talking about a physical card that you could swipe in meat space. Narrowing scope to the internet makes your bank idea easier though it would still take a ton of work.

How familiar are you with the regulations guarding the banking industry?

How do you plan to solve the chicken-egg adoption problem? Most vendors offer 3 to 5 credit card brands, and they won't want to adulterate their payment forms with strange unproven options. I wonder if collaborating with companies that build shopping cart plugins is the way to go or if you would have to fly solo for awhile before the established shopping cart players would take you seriously.

How many people are clamoring for such a financial account? If my credit card account gets comprised, the most I'm liable for is $50 or something like that. I check my transaction log for unusual activity, which I do with any financial account. Even companies that have purchasing cards reconcile the transactions. Apart from not having to pay $50 if my card ever gets compromised, what benefit would your bank serve to me?

<comment><USER2> All fair points, lets see if I can address each of them:

"How familiar are you with the regulations guarding the banking industry?" - out of date. Back when I was trying to get Sun into e-commerce (1995) was plugged in with Visa, First Data, SWIFT, these days not so much. At the time the regulations came in two forms, "Fair Credit" which is to say regulations regarding consumer relationships with the bank, and "Liability management" which was more interested in defining exactly when the liability for a transaction changed from one party to another.

"How do you plan to solve the chicken-egg adoption problem?" - I suspect the best way would be to partner with a vendor whose brand is under served (Discover comes to mind) The alternative is a slog ala Paypal's early days and no, we don't have an Ebay to leverage. Apple perhaps, especially if it meant Apple got to collect some buying habits metrics, they also have a big iTunes installed base this could plug into.

"How many people are clamoring for such a financial account? If my credit card account gets comprised, the most I'm liable for is $50 or something like that. I check my transaction log for unusual activity, which I do with any financial account. Even companies that have purchasing cards reconcile the transactions. Apart from not having to pay $50 if my card ever gets compromised, what benefit would your bank serve to me?" - One can never know for sure until you ship, but here are some bits of reasoning I've been using successfully:

People are being trained to leave a credit card on file for on-going purchases. Started really with iTunes but now every game console has something like it, every e-reader has something like it. Some online merchants like Amazon and O'Reilly support it. Concommitant with that many monthly services have enabled an 'auto-pay' facility of one form or another, currently dominated by banks but we could build one that was bank independent with the right API.

These changes are 'new' in that you haven't really had them on your credit card before, so the 'pain' comes when you have to unwind-rewind them. You go to buy something on Steam for example and it complains your card is invalid, and you go "oh yeah I had to cancel that card and they must have the old card." A lot of people who had Playstation network accounts got to experience this when that system got compromised.

My claim is that the convienience of 'dynamic subscriptions' will get wider (there are AppStores everywhere now!) the early servers of these are CC companies and phone companies, both of whom have "issues" with customer satisfaction and flexibility. I also claim that the pain of 'losing' control of a card will get worse as you have more and more of these dynamic subscriptions linked to it.

I expect the initial response will be multiple cards, but this adds its own issue if the statements are not closely monitored.

So while I feel it acutely today (I wondered why I didn't get my FreeBSD CD release and found out that Walnut Creek had my old card) I expect the experience to expand across the population as the number of dynamic subscriptions increase, the number of 'resets' due to exposed cards increases, and the time wastage of re-doing everything creates a value proposition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It might sound too obvious but often people try to come up with "ideas" instead of building what people need/want. I am pretty sure you just meant to ask: what should I build?

To find out what people need/want there are different ways to find out: Sites like: <http://www.43things.com/zeitgeist/goals> might help.

Also take a look at PGs "Ideas for Startups": <http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes exactly, "what should I build" is a better way to ask this question.

Great links - thanks. I had read the PG article a while ago but a re-read is good idea.

<comment><USER5> cmplma, please contact me when you have a chance -- alpswd (at*) gmail.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Local meetups are a great place to find like-minded individuals as well as other entrepreneurs (meetup.com).

Ditto noodleshare and builditwith.me

You can also try techcofounder.com. I hear the response rate for developers is quite high.

Your throwaway account is hindering my ability to Google you (and subsequently contact you myself), so if you want to talk, feel free to contact me. I have ideas too :).

<comment><USER7> Reading builditwith.me is exasperating, they're almost all outdated ideas with trendy buzzwords. "An alarm clock with gamification!"

And then there are gems like this: _"What is "Unified Passport System"? It likes Oauth, but it's more complicated."_ Yeah, because people were complaining that OAuth was too simple ;)

I guess you may find something worthwhile in there, but it seems to me that you can get a better return of your time by looking at what's already out there and thinking on how to improve it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> i agree with some of the recommendations already posted here, but i also highly recommend a technique known as 'freewriting.' it's based on the concept that ideas aren't endpoints, they're stepping stones to other ideas. the more ideas you have, regardless of quality, the better chance you'll navigate to a really good idea. i saw a review here on HN of an excellent book called Accidental Genius. here's the link to the review: [http://www.dextronet.com/blog/2011/07/accidental-genius- summ...](http://www.dextronet.com/blog/2011/07/accidental-genius-summary/)

</comment><comment><USER9> builditwith.me is a site made for this.

Also, I have a few ideas I would like to explore. Email me at firstname.lastname@example.com and we can talk.

</comment><comment><USER10> Sparkmuse.com has idea submission and rankings daily.Plus you can start a conversation with people and make connections.

</comment><comment><USER11> Noodleshare:

<http://www.noodleshare.com/>

</comment><comment><USER12> I have an idea, just to make you think for sometime, "YouTube of Text".

</comment><comment> rush-tea where are you located? if you are in bay area, lets talk, email me at firstname.lastname@example.com</comment>


Show HN: Your Free CS Education - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/user/DevFactor?sub_confirmation=1

<comment><USER2> I saw this yesterday and bookmarked it to come back to, but this auto- subscribe link kind of turns me off to the channel.

</comment><comment><USER3> Way to growth hack your youtube subscriptions :)</comment>


At 71, She's Never Felt Pain or Anxiety. Now Scientists Know Why - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/health/woman-pain-anxiety.html <comment><AUTHOR> Microdeletion in a FAAH pseudogene identified in a patient with high anandamide concentrations and pain insensitivity

Abdella M.Habib Andrei L.Okorokov Matthew N.Hill Jose T.Bras Man-CheungLee ShengnanLi Samuel J.Gossage Marievan Drimmelen MariaMorena HenryHoulden Juan D.Ramirez David L.H.Bennett DevjitSrivastava James J.Cox

[https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bja.2019.02.019](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bja.2019.02.019)</comment>


Roll your own Ruby Web Framework in Half an Hour - <AUTHOR> http://svs.io/post/59495114366/roll-your-own-web-framework-in-half-an-hour

<comment><USER2> It seems gauche to insult Rails for being bloated, while bragging that you can write your own framework in 43 lines of code -- while using ActionDispatch::Routing::RouteSet, a fairly complicated, very powerful, part of _Rails_ which takes way more than 43 lines to express.

(735 lines, not counting any of it's own dependencies inside Rails. [https://github.com/rails/rails/blob/master/actionpack/lib/ac...](https://github.com/rails/rails/blob/master/actionpack/lib/action_dispatch/routing/route_set.rb))

Sure, you wrote your own framework in 30 minutes -- by using a part of Rails which many many developer-hours have gone into, over many calendar years. ([https://github.com/rails/rails/commits/master/actionpack/lib...](https://github.com/rails/rails/commits/master/actionpack/lib/action_dispatch/routing/route_set.rb?page=7) history stops at rails3 four years ago, when they moved the router from one project to another... the actual history goes back further)

Rails may arguably be bloated, but as of Rails3 it's also amazingly modular and decoupled, allowing you to use just the parts of it you want. And OP thought the Router was awesome enough to want to reuse it. At least give it the credit it deserves, for that, when you're using Rails to write a framework you say shows how Rails is awful!

</comment><comment><USER3> The issue is that by the time you bring in an ORM/database migrations, form builder, link builders, asset pipeline, admin panel, etc you have basically hobbled together your own ghetto version of Rails without the vast resources/support that Rails has. One of the benefits of Rails is that it has all of those features mostly baked in - at the cost of some bloat.

But my project doesn't need all that, you might say. Well, that's fine, then use something like Sinatra. But I wouldn't build a non-toy web application without the above things.

<comment><USER4> It is somewhat ironic you chose the word ghetto when discussing Rails, as it reminds of Zed's previous article.

I think it is a good thing for new and maybe even experienced Ruby developers to build their own, to see a way beyond all the meta magic and five minute blogs, and that you really don't need that much plumbing to get things moving and understandable.

At least it didn't say roll Rails in five minutes - it would take much longer than that to bake in all the security holes and to stick YAML parsers all over the shop.

<comment><USER5> IIRC, Zed was referring to the community, and not the software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a Drupal developer, I find it cute how you Ruby guys consider Rails to be massive and monolithic. You know nothing of massive and monolithic :)

<comment><USER7> I've been working with Rails for five years, and a year ago I had an aborted project with a friend on Drupal on which I spent about 6 weeks. It was pretty terrible.

<comment><USER8> Aborted project on Drupal sums up my latest experience with it too. I have completed a couple over the years though, but after building a few Rails apps, never again will I use Drupal.

<comment><USER7> I complain a lot about documentation in Ruby and Rails, but wow, Drupal eats those deficiencies for lunch. It was where I concluded that, sometimes, know- how is held closely as a profit center. It's not even a learning curve thing where the ladder to expertise is long, but that several rungs are entirely missing, if not kicked through by previous climbers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For what it's worth, I was dissatisfied with most Ruby frameworks (aka. Rails & Sinatra), so when it came time to build up a massive project on a Ruby backend, I rolled my own minimal (<1kloc) Ruby framework.

[https://github.com/kballenegger/kenji](https://github.com/kballenegger/kenji)

I, too, find Rails to be a bloated mess. Here's what I wanted out of my ideal framework:

\- The "framework" has one single task: providing a DSL for routing requests, and dealing with the HTTP nitty-gritty.

\- The default would be build for JSON APIs. The return value of routes gets serialized to JSON.

\- Everything is explicit. No magic.

\- You can organize you code in simple, maintainable units (files), grouped by functionality. (This is achieved through a tree routing structure, where controllers can pass / forward certain routes to other controllers.

\- Code can be namespaced, can be tested easily, can be scripted easily. Functionality does not depend on naming conventions.

<comment><AUTHOR> ^^^ This

;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you are curious about a roll-your-own article similar to this, but for Python: [http://docs.webob.org/en/latest/do-it- yourself.html](http://docs.webob.org/en/latest/do-it-yourself.html)</comment>


Valve Software dreams of analyzing your brainwaves to tailor in-game rewards - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/03/valve-software-dreams-of-analyzing-your-brainwaves-to-tailor-in-game-rewards/ <comment><AUTHOR> I might be a bit cynic here but wouldn't it be easier for them to skip the gaming part and directly move on into the drug business?</comment>


REST Client for Google Chrome - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rest/flkpngnnmfhmdcoggeompbgbpocpfmgk <comment><USER2> Also worth considering Postman ([https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/postman-rest- clien...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/postman-rest- client/fdmmgilgnpjigdojojpjoooidkmcomcm?hl=en)) I particularly like that it allows you to save groups of requests into "Collections" so you can have quick access to all the main API calls from one app.

You can also export these collections and share them with other team members.

This is particularly useful for sanity checking before deploys e.g. just running through each API call to make sure users can login and perform primary actions.

<comment><USER3> I totally love POSTMAN. The collections thingy is really cool. I'll give REST a shot too, though :).

<comment><USER2> REST does look interesting. Tried to give it a go but it's dependant on also installing the "Websecurify" extension ([https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/websecurify/emclbd...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/websecurify/emclbdbpcnhmopfkidjhlinikkohlkpn)).

Websecurify looks interesting in itself but requires "access to your data on all websites" permission which means doing a load of research into what it's actually doing etc etc which seems like a lot of effort just to try out a rest client.

Best of luck to them though, Postman made by workflow testing API's hugely more efficient so if they manage to improve on that it'll be a great tool.

<comment><USER3> Same. I tried to install, and saw the dependency and the permission I didn't really like. Once finally installed, I had to guess how to make a request work.

I mean, if I have to fill a full request myself, I'd better directly use a terminal.

Right now, POSTMAN fills all my needs, and the alternative will have to be really good to make me change.

Maybe people not aware of postman would appreciate more.

<comment><AUTHOR> These features will be added soon.

<comment><USER3> Cool!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This isn't a pure Chrome Extension, it just takes you to the site: <https://suite.websecurify.com/rest>

One of the main uses of a rest client in a chrome extension (e.g. postman/advanced REST client) is so you can use it offline. The entire functionality of the webpage is written in JS (<https://suite.websecurify.com/rest/script>) so it could be easily packaged into a true chrome extension, frankly as it stands this seems to be a bit of a half arsed attempt to get more exposure.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are missing the point. This works in offline mode too. Everything is client-side. As a bonus it also works in Firefox. The reason it is hosted like this is because it provides more flexibility and allow us to deploy more awesome features more rapidly.

<comment><USER5> Wait...you can change the script the extension runs, at any time, without user notification? Yeah...no....

<comment><AUTHOR> You do not affect the extension. That will be against policy. It is client- side code and all it does it to send raw HTTP requests from the page of the app. It cannot run in the background. It works the same way in Firefox too.

Also, there are no notifications when updating extensions anyway - not that you can prevent those updates or even bother reading the code. Nothing changes really from the perspective of the browser security model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How does it differ from Postman ([https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/postman-rest- clien...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/postman-rest- client/fdmmgilgnpjigdojojpjoooidkmcomcm?hl=en))?

Seems that both solve the same problem.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'll ask this on the off chance that this was posted by the author; have you considered adding support for importing from and exporting to curl commands?

When you work in a team with non-developer testers they tend to use a GUI REST client like this, while most of the developers will prefer working with curl commands instead.

You don't want to know how many hours have been wasted manually converting these calls back and forth ... especially when somebody converts them incorrectly.

<comment><AUTHOR> This feature has been added. Wait for the app to update. Refresh. Press ESC to get into escape mode. Now you can type any curl command. Most options are supported. It works just like bash. When you hit enter, the command will be converted into a request and executed.

Soon, it will be possible to go the other way around as well, i.e. convert a request to curl.

I hope this will be helpful to you in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Shameless plug, I wrote a commercial desktop app (with a free version of course) for REST Testing, called WcfStorm.Rest. If anyone needs to manage test cases, perf test and generate test reports, please have a look at my software. [http://www.wcfstorm.com/wcf/Data/Sites/1/WcfStormImages/REST...](http://www.wcfstorm.com/wcf/Data/Sites/1/WcfStormImages/REST.TestDifft.png)

</comment><comment><USER9> Simple and also good: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dev-http- client/ae...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dev-http- client/aejoelaoggembcahagimdiliamlcdmfm/)

</comment><comment><USER10> The `Advanced REST Client` attempts to solve the same problem - [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/advanced-rest- clie...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/advanced-rest- client/hgmloofddffdnphfgcellkdfbfbjeloo)

Like the others have mentioned here, there are a couple of tools in chrome that try to solve the same problem. Not that it is a bad thing. Has anyone used them all to summarize pros / cons ?

</comment><comment><USER11> I've been using Advanced REST Client [1] for quite a while now. Have not yet encountered anything about it that I don't like. That's usually a good sign of quality software -- to me at least.

[1] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/advanced-rest- clie...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/advanced-rest- client/hgmloofddffdnphfgcellkdfbfbjeloo?hl=en-US)

</comment><comment><USER12> REST Console is pretty good too [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rest- console/cokgb...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rest- console/cokgbflfommojglbmbpenpphppikmonn?utm_source=chrome-ntp-launcher)

</comment><comment><USER13> Every time I see "REST Client", I always say to myself "You mean, web browser?"

<comment><USER14> For a GET or DELETE request maybe, try doing anything else of substance and you pretty quickly need a dedicated REST client.

<comment><USER13> I try daily. I program web apps for a living.

A web browser is literally a "dedicated REST client". REST is just HTTP. It's the pattern HTTP to exchange messages. Representations and methods. Sure, HTML forms never implemented the full range of methods [facepalm], but most engines allow method parameter overrides (_method=PUT|DELETE). And it does get harder when doing these live via JavaScript, and exchanging data other than HTML like JSON.

Of course I use HTTP tools other than the generic web browser UI. Firefox extensions get you pretty far with HTTP logging/modification like Firebug, Poster, TamperData. There's also some standalone apps like Fiddler and friends. But meh.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Could not figure out how to add request headers.

<comment><AUTHOR> You type them, i.e Header: Value

<comment><USER15> Typing the below

GET XUsername:ADMIN [https://localhost:443/resources/myresource/1](https://localhost:443/resources/myresource/1) HTTP/1.1 Host: target

gives an error in the REST: "Your request contains errors"

<comment><AUTHOR> This request is invalid.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Surprised? - <AUTHOR> http://zerodistraction.com/notes/surprised

<comment><USER2> You've got some weird line-wrapping going on.

(formatted to appear as it does for me)

> We now live in a world where it is the norm for an incredibly robust and > full feat > ured piece of software to exist in the palm of our hands, all > whilst costing us less > than a cup of coffee and a pastry. The long term > financial viability of the App Sto > re for many developers has probably > been discussed ad nauseam, however I do w > ant to resurface the discussion > briefly. Unless you happen to be one of the luckil

<comment><AUTHOR> Renders fine for me on both my Mac (in Safari) and on my iPhone 5.

I have auto-hyphenation, but the hyphenation should render properly and not break-up sentences badly. What browser are you using?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How many YC-accepted are pre-traction/pre-revenue? - <AUTHOR> Sure, everyone tells you to apply, and it "only takes 5 minutes to apply.<p>But in practice, with so many applicants, it must be so much easier to simply wait and take a team who has already churned out (a less exciting?) product. <comment><USER2> Why is a churned out (in the market) product less exciting than an idea with no proof / implementation?</comment>


Show HN: Android app for COLOURlovers.com patterns - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.lucasr.pattrn

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm a COLOURlovers fan. Created this app to play a bit more with the Android platform. Just for fun. Feedback is welcome. A bit more background info on the app can be found here: <http://lucasr.org/?p=2825></comment>


Cheetahs' inner ear is one-of-a-kind, vital to high-speed hunting - <AUTHOR> https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-02/amon-cie020218.php <comment><USER2> Relevant, cheetahs running filmed with an high speed camera: Cheetahs on the Edge—Director's Cut [https://vimeo.com/53914149](https://vimeo.com/53914149)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for this clip, it's amazing how it keeps the head still. BTW, the kingfisher has similar ability, check this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIs4tpV2FUQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIs4tpV2FUQ)

<comment><USER4> Optical image stabilization! I am interested to see that this seems to be the way various predators have solved the problem, I take it that unlike the direction our camera technology is going (which is to throw more software at the problem), it was most economical to use a lot of tiny neck muscle adjustments (no Moore's law for predator brains, to be fair, so it might have tied up a lot of neurons to do the same in software).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >> the cheetah, is a successful hunter not only because it is quick, but also because it can hold an incredibly still gaze while pursuing prey.

A bit off-topic but I have a theory on athletic ability when it comes to certain sports related to this post. Before I share my theory, consider this 1 minute clip narrated by an apex predator.

[https://youtu.be/S9MtJ164XJI?t=1m24s](https://youtu.be/S9MtJ164XJI?t=1m24s)

When I was young there was a lot of ethic tension in my neighborhood. Being a minority, I always felt like prey. I didn't even trust the police. I lost every street fight and broke a few bones along the way. And I was terrible at almost all _ball_ sports because I could not get my eyes to smoothly track the motion of a basketball for example.

I suspect, but don't know for a fact, that they eyes of prey being chased by said cheetah are darting chaotically looking for any and all escape routes and to avoid additional predators.

In my 30's I spent time training in brutal martial art combat techniques. I trained in powerlifting and 10 years ago I weighed 200lbs. I grew muscles I didn't know existed. Now, I have lost nearly all of these gains because I no longer train, but I managed to achieve and maintain that predator instinct. When I play racquetball, I _murder_ that ball. I can track it perfectly.

The downside is I have safely ridden a motorcycle most of my life. I find I have more "close calls" now that I lost my innate ability to feel like prey which no longer comes naturally.

<comment><USER6> Ride safe bud. Wear good gear and be disciplined about maintenance.

For lack of a better way to phrase it...what exactly is your point?

<comment><USER7> He's proposing a theroy about human behavior. His idea is that when people are used to feeling unsafe they tend towards prey animal survival strategies (eyes darting around, focusing on escape routes instead of goals) and that when people get used to being on top of things they tend to adopt predator animal behaviors (eyes on the ball, focusing on goals instead of possible escapes.)

<comment><USER6> The reason I wasn't sure this was what he was trying to say is that good motorcyclists tend to keep their eyes steady on the horizon, and yet also, they continuously identify possible escape routes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting article. Sounds like the cheetah has a sort of natural implementation of camera stabilization. Their head stays still despite the exaggerated motion of everything else during a high speed chase.

<comment><USER9> Don't humans have this too?

<comment><USER10> Yes. Pretty much all vertebrates have something like this. The claim here is that cheetah's have an unusually well developed vestibular system, and that this evolution was recent (developed after the 'concept' of a cheetah evolved).

The linked paper is free to read. The actual research itself is limited to the anatomical study of how cheetah's vestibular system are different from other cats. It builds on other papers that talk about the relative advanceness of the cheetah's head stabilization, and the estimated benefits of the stabilization.

<comment><USER11> Specifically from the article:

> They found that the inner ears of living cheetahs differ markedly from those > of all other felids alive today, with a greater overall volume of the > vestibular system and longer anterior and posterior semicircular canals.

> These traits were not present in Acinonyx pardinensis, the extinct species > examined by the researchers, emphasizing the recent evolution of the highly > specialized inner ear of modern cheetah.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > The inner ear facilitates the cheetah's remarkable ability to maintain > visual and postural stability while running and capturing prey at speeds of > up to 65 miles per hour. Until now, no one has investigated the inner ear's > role in this incredible hunting specialization.

This is crazy. How does the ear affect the ability to move? I guess Cheetahs and cats in general just have insanely acute hearing.

<comment><USER10> The inner ear (vestibular system) helps you maintain balance. The inner ear has a series of curved liquid filled canals that are also lined with sensitive hairs. As your head accelerates, the liquid sloshes around and the hairs pick up on the movement.

Being able to stablize your head during running lets you do a few thing:

* It probably makes it easier to continue tracking the prey. It probably makes it easier to see what the prey is doing (are they about to turn? are they looking somewhere? what's going on?)

* While running, if you can minimize any vertical movement, you can minimize energy consumption. Presumably even if your body/shoulders were displacing vertically while running, if you could maintain your head at a fixed vertical position with respect to the ground, you could save the energy put into moving the head against gravity. Obviously this advantage is heavily biomechanically and anatomically situational, and may not always be the case</comment></comment>