Ask HN: Dropbox security bug? - <AUTHOR>

I had always thought that my Dropbox shared folders required an invitation, to see the files, or at least I could copy the invitation link and send it directly to someone, who would then have to register to see the folder and files.
But no, apparently if I send a link to a folder ("Copy link to this folder"), they can go straight in and download anything they like without having to register at all. I'm not talking about the files in the Public folder which I never use. It's a private folder.
This couldn't be more clear from the Web site dox:
"Other Dropbox users can't see your private files in Dropbox unless you deliberately invite them or put them in your Public folder. Everything in your Public folder is, by definition, accessible to anyone."
If they get hold of the link they don't have to be deliberately invited. Try it and let me know.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/hp1cxs474rm5fpn/PadV8OneIS
I tried this link from another user on a clean browser on my Mac, and it allowed me straight in. Now, I know I have DropBox running on my user, but surely it should still prevent me from seeing these files if I hadn't registered. I haven't had the opportunity to try it on someone else's machine yet - hence this post...
If this is the case then my folder is not secure, and worse I don't have any idea who has access to it.
Maybe I'm missing something, maybe it performs "as designed", but I don't like this - and I don't think its clear for the user either. <comment><USER2> It's working as designed and is not a bug. The help documentation describes the functionality:-

1) <https://www.dropbox.com/help/167/en> 2) <https://www.dropbox.com/help/20/en>

<comment><AUTHOR> See my reply to @nodata.

Accept that this functionality exists - but because of the way it is implemented it is not clear when you do this that you are not doing the same thing.

Reading the docs after you have found out that your security is wide open is not acceptable.

One of the reasons why I am pretty annoyed at this is that I was recommending DropBox to a business partner who asked if I knew of a service that could store and manage access to sensitive docs.

I then fell for this _massive gotcha_ two days later. Hence I had to revise my advice - not to use Dropbox because it was too easy to make a mistake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Are you confusing Public folders with shared folders?

If it's a shared folder then at some point you explicitly created a link to share access to that folder. If you don't want this anymore, you can revoke access. There is a big link icon next to folders you have shared.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope. The button to copy the link is in the same dialogue as the one you use to invite specific people.

Given there is a distinction between the security of invited as opposed to just shared this same dialogue is not clear that there is a difference in security - that's the issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yep, I can see two folders in there and your 26.76MB PDF file. Also lets me delve into the subfolders.

I always wondered about this as well. Surely if you share the URL with someone, they could reshare it and as you say you then don't know who has access.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes that's my point.

It seems to undermine the idea of security. I'd rather have that functionality limited in someway that makes it clear that you are making the folder "public" and no longer private.

<comment><USER5> Public means that anyone can access it without any verification/authentication info. Private in this context would mean that it's limited to people who received the link.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep - but I challenge you to determine that from the sharing dialogue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am able to view your files. Did you contact Dropbox and check with them?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> clickable

<https://www.dropbox.com/sh/hp1cxs474rm5fpn/PadV8OneIS></comment>


Show HN: HN Domain Leaderboard - <AUTHOR> https://hnleaderboard.com/? <comment><USER2> So that others can play with the data, here's a reverse engineering of the BigQuery OP used to create the leaderboard:

       #standardSQL
       SELECT
         domain,
         COUNT(*) AS num_posts,
         perc_75,
         AVG(score) AS avg_score,
         (AVG(score) + 2*perc_75) * LOG(COUNT(*)) AS calc_score
       FROM (
         SELECT
           REGEXP_REPLACE(NET.HOST(url), 'www.', '') AS domain,
           score,
           PERCENTILE_CONT(score,
             0.75) OVER (PARTITION BY REGEXP_REPLACE(NET.HOST(url), 'www.', '')) AS perc_75
         FROM
           `bigquery-public-data.hacker_news.full`
         WHERE
           type = 'story'
           AND url IS NOT NULL )
       GROUP BY
         domain,
         perc_75
       ORDER BY
         calc_score DESC

Top 10000 results: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Z9atmizTAPkgFiBte2eQ...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Z9atmizTAPkgFiBte2eQiQgxEAiMyMB7Q99fzMzfIJs/edit?usp=sharing)

(it's apparently not a perfect match since there appears to be a minimum # of posts requirement for domains [e.g. without that requirement, [https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=pardonsnowden.org](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=pardonsnowden.org) is #3], which should be added to the description of the leaderboard)

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that's pretty much it, though my domain regex is much uglier! Yeah you're right about a minimum # of posts cutoff — I set it to 25. Forgot to add this to the description but have added it now. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very cool, thanks for sharing! I did a somewhat similar analysis a while back [1], and I found that many of the top domains either had a YC affiliation or corresponded to extremely well-known companies or organizations. This made me interested in finding lesser known blogs that also produce high quality content. I tried to identify these by putting a limit on the number of unique users who had submitted content from each domain. My thinking here was that something like the GitHub blog would have submissions from many users, while smaller personal blogs would probably be mostly self-promoted. Using this approach, I was able to turn up some pretty interesting blogs that I had never heard of before.

I think it could really increase the usefulness of HN Domain Leaderboard if you added some additional filtering capabilities. Filtering based on the category would probably be pretty easy because you have that information there already, but perhaps also consider some measure of how broadly promoted each domain is. The time range option is already pretty cool, and I'll bet that a few more options would make it even more fun to play around with.

[1] - [https://intoli.com/blog/pareto-optimal- blogs/](https://intoli.com/blog/pareto-optimal-blogs/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Really interesting blog post and cool idea for surfacing small high- quality blogs.

I'd been planning to add filtering on categories from the start, but it was meant to be a weekend project so my motivation had started to drop after that, so I just wanted to put it out there. Will add extra filters in the next few days!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd really like to see the opposite of this: domains that have been flagged multiple times and have a high submissions-to-upvotes ratio so that I can filter them out.

<comment><USER5> While we're asking for features, I would like the opposite of that: a way to see only flagged domains, but ideally filtering out the spam/junk in some way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It would be great if you could add top posts from each of these domains. I am really interested to see the top content I may have missed from a few of these domains.

<comment><USER7> Until he adds that, we could rely on the official HN search

[https://hn.algolia.com](https://hn.algolia.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a little out of date but may be of interest here. This is a visualization of the top 10,000 HN posts [https://www.sizzleanalytics.com/Boards/sizzle/Hacker-News- To...](https://www.sizzleanalytics.com/Boards/sizzle/Hacker-News-Top-Posts- All-Time/dfb2af8e-67fa-47a7-892c-435de6321378)

</comment><comment><USER9> I would have thought bravenewgeek.com would make it onto the leaderboard since his posts [1] are typically high quality.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=bravenewgeek.com](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=bravenewgeek.com)

</comment><comment><USER10> Kind of amazing that the Rust blog, something relatively new, is the top domain of all time.

</comment><comment><USER11> Ah! was searching around for exactly this just a week ago and gave up. Could you add more granular date filters? (past month past week etc?) thanks for doing it!

</comment><comment><USER12> Interesting that there are no News related domains in the list. I wounder if that is due to the number of posts those domains have that never gain any traction.

<comment><USER13> Seems off to me. Anecdotally I am constantly reading Bloomberg news articles linked to on front page of HN.

<comment><USER14> Switch to the view that shows just the last year and you'll see lots of news sites.

This matches what I've been sensing (rightly or wrongly) in that the mix of stories has shifted from computer science and engineering to have a more business and general interest mix since I first started reading HN regularly. This goes for the sources as well as the stories themselves.

<comment><USER12> I agree with your observations. It is getting further and further away from it's roots.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> How did you determine the domain categories?

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually hand-labeled the categories, but only for roughly the top 100 domains in each time period. The categories are a little bit arbitrary (where is the line between individual and blog, or blog and publication?) but I was mainly interested in seeing the distinction between individuals and companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is mean a valid statistic for this dataset?

I suspect that the score a link gets is highly variable and doesn't follow a known distribution, therefore, taking a straight mean may not be a valid thing to do, or at the very least, very very skewed.

That being said, cool idea, well executed.

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://hnleaderboard.com/about](https://hnleaderboard.com/about) :)

<comment> et-al Love the site. It's clear and to the point.

One thing, if I may add, is that you need a link from the "about" page back to the main page.

Thanks again for sharing!

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you like the site :) Good point — I'll add that in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interesting that so many of the top sites are "individual". I always thought that self promotion was shunned on places like HN, but I guess if you do it in the "right" way, it can be a successful tactic.

<comment><USER18> The articles for those sites aren't necessarily being submitted by the people who run them. In most it's likely others who found the content useful. I suppose if you squint anything you post on your own site is self-promotion, but that's not the impression I get from your comment. Am I mistaken?

<comment><USER17> They all include somewhat useful articles, but some of them (once you arrive) are also quite self promoting. I think the odds are quite slim that _this_ many others randomly stumbled across articles on obscure domains and submitted them repeatedly, so yes I think the owners of them are in many cases responsible for them having been submitted to HN.

But I wasn't actually disparaging any of them, or suggesting anything inappropriate has happened. I guess I'm just surprised that HN as a community, with such a high degree of anti-commercialism on the site, has given these sites this much exposure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Aphyr needs more upvotes :)

EDIT: never mind - on the three year view he's in the top 10

</comment><comment><USER20> I thought this would be a leaderboard of what users get the most votes for comments on different topics.

</comment><comment><USER21> Karpathy got into the top 20 most upvoted domain submissions? I don't even remember that many.

</comment><comment><USER22> nit: blog.pinboard.in is classified as individual

<comment><USER23> Considering it's one person, it might as well be individual.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> hnleaderboard insecure connection rip

<comment><USER25> Also blocked by Cisco Umbrella. "This site is blocked due to a security threat that was discovered by the Cisco Umbrella security researchers."</comment></comment>


Physics-Based Animation - <AUTHOR> http://www.physicsbasedanimation.com/ <comment><USER2> FWIW, I created this site 7 or 8 years ago during my PhD, just as a way to keep track of and organize all the papers coming out in my research field. Happy to answer questions or comments if you have any.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice aggregation of papers. It would be extra nice to have embedded youtube videos for each of the papers. Half the fun of these graphics papers is the crazy videos they make.

<comment><USER4> You're not wrong; every title on that page is crying out for a video! The images in the papers seem to have been taken from animated models too :( Plus it would give a lot more context to the reader and really display how good the algorithm is.</comment></comment>


Set Up Your New Macintosh Out of The Box (How-to) - <AUTHOR> http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/set_up_your_new_macintosh_out_of_the_box/ <comment><USER2> Nice collection of tips for setting up your new Mac.</comment>


Ask HN: What are some tools that help you to structurize and execute your ideas? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> These are some tools that help structure ideas.

1\. Trello: most obvious one i suppose but it's still as useful as the day it came out.

2\. Workflowy: one of the more recent tools I've found. I like it because it's 100% keyboard based and makes it really easy to work with nested lists.

3\. Freemind: open source mind mapping software. I rarely use it nowadays but this too is a pretty powerful tool to visualize your ideas and structure them into nested lists

4\. Freewriting: this is not a software rather a method to create the first draft of your idea. Very useful sometimes especially for perfectionists who get stuck at minute details or bikeshedding.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure what you mean by tools. But I go about structuring my ideas in the following way (at least for software related ideas.): First, I do secondary research about the idea. It's extremely rare that you have a completely unique idea.. And even if that is true, there has got to be some very close existing product/service to it. So I learn as much as I possibly can about them. During my research, I usually go about answering a few key questions: \- Why hasn't anyone done <your idea> yet? \- Why is it a good time now to do it? (this is perhaps one of the most important) \- If someone is doing this, how can you differentiate yourself from them? By region/features/target audience etc..?

Once those are HONESTLY answered, you should start looking at your idea in as much detail as you possibly can. Don't assume things will work out or that you will figure it out later.. Concretely, what I do is answer the following things: \- How will I get my first 10 users/customers? \- Out of these 10, the first one to "test" your product/service out, what is their ideal experience? (and then think backwards as to how you can give them that.. non scalable method is fine initially.) \- What about the 2nd user? the 3rd user? will the 3rd user benefit in any way because there were already 2 other people before them to use the product.. (network effect)? \- Why will the 1st user stick to your product after their first ideal experience? Remember, that most people dont care much about most things... You have to work through things to keep the first user onboard. \- Why will the other users out of these 10 stick to your product/service? \- How will these 10 users cause other's to use your product? (word of mouth is the best form of growth.) \- Once you reach the initial steady state of the product (a point where initial automatic growth stops, current users are happy), what does that look like? And how will you grow from there? (The what does that look like is very important. How will you grow from there is something that can be answered a little later too.. as most ideas never reach that anyways). \- Eventually, what is your plan? And if you are doing this for profit, how will that plan allow you to make "enough" money? Again, you should have some idea of this. It doesnt need to be proven/super concrete, but the clearer this is in your mind, the better. Having no idea of this is not good, but you are probably wrong if you are super confident since most ideas evolve quite a bit.

The above is the ideation phase. There are probably tons of things that are missing from the above, but I think the ones above are quite important to answer. In the above, I assume you already know that there is proven demand or there will be demand for your product/idea once people see it.

About the execution phase: \- Start with "drawing" what your product/service would be like. \- Find a way to get as many people to see it/understand it and give you feedback.. ideally when you, approach someone with it, try and see from their point of view. Try and turn your pitch very specific to them, their problem (which your idea addresses). \- The feedback process will most likely change your idea/initial design. It may even end up in you not believing in your idea anymore. This will be a tricky situation to be in. \- If you do end up "passing" the above, then you most likely will have a concrete product/service to build. \- The actual building varies a lot based on ideas.. so I am not going to comment on that here. \- But ideally, while you are building, get as many people interesting in it.. Create maybe a mailing list of people who will be willing to try it out once you are ready. Do whatever, but try and get your initial set of users interested and waiting for you to launch. This will not only boost your confidence, but it will also teach you lots about how difficult it will be to "sell" our product once you have finally made it.

I hope the above helps you.. these are just my thoughts from my personal experiences :) Execution is everything... and it is super hard. You need to really believe in what you are making in order for it to work out.. All the best!!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the detailed answer.

I seriously like the 2nd question!

<comment><USER3> Cheers! Glad to help. If you want to discuss your idea specifically, you can DM me on reddit: @ilovefunctions</comment></comment></comment>


I have a Million Dollar startup. Should I opt for a job at Big 4? - <AUTHOR> I'm a recent Computer Science graduate also the CTO of a Million dollar startup. Being a Computer science Engineer and Tech enthusiast, my long time goal was to get the taste of work culture at one of the Big 4. especially to learn a lot about the engineering practices and working in large-scale systems. But now, I'm put up in a situation to choose between my Startup and Working at Big 4. <comment><USER2> WTH is a "Million dollar startup"?

Million dollar revenue? Million dollar profit? Million dollar valuation?

If you have million dollar revenue or profit but don't have control, then you're just an employee at a small business. It's better to work at a more successful company than a company you don't care about.

If you DO own the company (not just the "CTO" title but actually own shares), then it would be weird that you're asking this question.

If you're talking about a million dollar valuation...hahaha.

</comment><comment><USER3> Since you feel compelled to ask the question, I suspect that you do NOT have $1M in cash in your bank account. So you'll earn more and learn heaps at a Big 4 company ... that is if they will hire you. Calling yourself a CS engineer hints that you don't have any qualifications, because that term is never used. An engineer is somebody who has completed an accredited engineering degree. Just like a dentist is not any guy with a pair of pliers.

</comment><comment><USER4> Why not a 100 million dollar startup or a billion dollar startup?</comment>


SymWin: Type special characters on Windows without the alt-key bullshit - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mjvh80/SymWin <comment><AUTHOR> As noted by the author, it's inspired by this:

[http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/20505/how-to-add- ch...](http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/20505/how-to-add-characters- to-the-press-and-hold-character-picker-in-os-x-lion)</comment>


All humans have SAME ancestors; a single couple living up to 200,000 years ago - <AUTHOR> https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6424407/Every-person-spawned-single-pair-adults-living-200-000-years-ago-scientists-claim.html <comment><USER2> Horrible article, more horrible title!!!

They found a bottleneck in many species 200000ya, I guess at some point they analyzed the most recent common ancestor in the male and female form, [1] [2] and it was completely misunderstood.

Some sane coverage of the paper: [https://biologos.org/blogs/archive/did-90-of-animal- species-...](https://biologos.org/blogs/archive/did-90-of-animal-species- appear-about-the-same-time-as-human-beings) [https://phys.org/news/2018-05-special-humanity-tiny-dna- diff...](https://phys.org/news/2018-05-special-humanity-tiny-dna- differences.html)

Also, remember the results of each study is provisional until a few ears later when enough independent groups have review and replicated the results. Peer review is only the first filter.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Adam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Adam)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve)</comment>


Show HN: Intuitive Software Lingo (New effort, pull requests welcome) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/amorphid/intuitive_software_lingo <comment><AUTHOR> I wanted to pin down some terms we throw around at work that were intuitive, concise, and good enough for use in high level conversations about software. Pull requests welcome.</comment>


AT&T's answer to AWS EC2 - <AUTHOR> http://cloudarchitect.att.com/Home/? <comment><USER2> I can't imagine why I would ever use this. Perhaps AT&T is a trusted brand for big corporations.

</comment><comment><USER3> I thought it looked familiar: [http://structureresearch.net/2012/01/24/att- cloud-architect-...](http://structureresearch.net/2012/01/24/att-cloud- architect-uses-softlayer-infrastructure-platform/)</comment>


Engineering Practices in Data Science - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kaggle.com/2012/10/04/engineering-practices-in-data-science/

<comment><USER2> Well I guess I'll pat myself on the back for always using git. Having seen a lab's major university research project literally evaporate due to lack of proper version control I've been keen on it ever since. Besides, I like the incremental feel of accomplishment when I make the next commit.

I agree that setting up a dedicated pipeline early on in a project and committing yourself to work within its confines aids organization, but it also contributes to putting your creativity in the right place. We often enjoy building things for the sake of building and those of us with stronger proclivities towards engineering can sometimes get too jolly putting together new pipes when we should be training models. I have been guilty in the past of writing a Perl script that spawned shell scripts that cued Perl scripts on a cluster that ran R scripts that piped back into Perl scripts. Then again I always liked the boardgame Mouse Trap.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool article, thanks. I used to spend 90% of my downtime trying to improve my stats and machine learning knowledge, but in the last couple years I've come to realize how much my lack of proper engineering was hurting me.

A (flawed) analogy: if data science is storytelling, stats is the story and engineering is the words you use to tell it. You need to do well at both to effectively tell your story.

>...good engineering going out the window quickly with elaborate ensembling.

This is one of my criticisms of data mining contests (sorry kaggle!). When I was in grad school I liked doing these contests to get practical experience - my last company actually recruited me through one. But as they got more popular I found the best engineers and data scientists stopped having as much of a chance of winning. Good modelers get 90% of the way there and then are beaten by impractical solutions that would get someone fired from a job.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's an interesting criticism and there are competition properties that we've identified that can lead to overly complex models. An obvious one, for instance, is running a competition for a very long period of time. A more subtle factor is the degree to which the context of the data has been stripped away - with very little context (just an anonymized feature matrix) it's more likely that victory will go to someone who can squeeze every bit of performance out of an ensemble of ML techniques. But with good context, it's more likely that feature engineering and insight will lead to victory.

Many times it is in fact the well-organized, well-engineered solutions that win. And they are often elegant and intuitive because the data scientist could iterate quickly and try out lots of ideas. Though the crazy ensemble does sometimes eek out a victory, it's not an inherent property of competitions by any means.

One final note: I'm not sure if this is widely known, but impractical solutions are actually just fine for a certain set of competitions. Some competitions are designed to identify the "data frontier" - the limit of what's possible in a dataset - rather than getting a model into production.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It appears our blog is down. Oof. Apologies for the inconvenience. While we're figuring it out on it here is a mirror of the post: [http://blog.untrod.com/2012/10/engineering-practices-in- data...](http://blog.untrod.com/2012/10/engineering-practices-in-data- science.html)

Edit: And we're back up.

</comment><comment><USER4> I love definitions that wax my ego! I grok revision control, and can sling enough R / stats to officially make me a nerd of an urban planner. Does this mean I can start calling myself an "urban data scientist"? I definitely need a pay raise.</comment>


DPDK – Libraries and Drivers for Fast Packet Processing - <AUTHOR> http://dpdk.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> What grabbed my attention is the Nginx fork [0], which uses DPDK! There's also a Redis one [1]! And here's the main library [2].

Edit: There's also a user space library from the same author [3].

[0]: [https://github.com/opendp/dpdk-nginx](https://github.com/opendp/dpdk- nginx)

[1]: [https://github.com/opendp/dpdk-redis](https://github.com/opendp/dpdk- redis)

[2]: [https://github.com/opendp/dpdk-ans](https://github.com/opendp/dpdk-ans)

[3]: [https://github.com/jiakai1000/ustack](https://github.com/jiakai1000/ustack)

<comment><USER2> What's the difference between [2] and [3]? They are both described as "userspace TCP/IP stack based on DPDK".

<comment><AUTHOR> It looks like [3] is a reboot.

<comment><USER2> I see. Thanks.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


HarperCollins Allows Temporary Access to Full Text of "Cryptonomicon" - <AUTHOR> http://browseinside.harpercollins.com/index.aspx?isbn13=9780380788620&WT.mc_id=NEWS_AUTK_AOA-STESON_090408

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a little tedious to access, but a very good resource since this:

[http://www.innternet.de/~peter.patti/stephenson-neal- crypton...](http://www.innternet.de/~peter.patti/stephenson-neal- cryptonomicon.txt)

is missing the diagrams.</comment>


English Units of Measure - <AUTHOR> http://hypertextbook.com/physics/foundations/system-english/ Really awesome primer on the English system of measurement and its history. <comment><USER2> Of course, the title should be 'Old english units of measure'. England started officially becoming metric in 1965 (with a few exceptions like road signs and pints of beer).

<comment><USER3> Confusingly, the US system commonly referred as "English units" differs from the traditional English Imperial unit used before metrication in several key ways - the most notable difference being the US units of liquid volume being notably smaller than their Imperial counterparts.

<comment><USER2> Oh, the US refers to it as English Units does it? That explains a lot. In the UK one talks about the two systems as being Metric and Imperial.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's missing so much, like the know used to be defined at 42 fathoms per 30 seconds, giving 5040 ft per hour, which was close to the original definition of the mile. Then when the nautical mile was more useful it became 47'3" in 28 seconds, which equates to 6075 ft/hr, which is pretty close to the idea of 1 NM/hr.

There's more, but it's pretty good. A fun read.

Challenge question, a snail's pace is a furlong/fortnight. How fast is that in SI units?

<comment><USER5> [http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=1+furlong+per+fortnight+in+...](http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=1+furlong+per+fortnight+in+m/s)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it.

<comment><USER7> That works out to 0.00198412698 miles per gallon. I hope Homer left out a couple of zeros--but then again, given the car he built, my hope is likely misplaced.</comment></comment>


AT&T CEO: iMessage disrupts our messaging revenue stream - <AUTHOR> http://9to5mac.com/2012/05/04/att-ceo-imessage-disrupts-our-messaging-revenue-stream-unlimited-data-was-a-mistake/ Wow. <comment><USER2> I probably gained back sleep when iMessage was announced. Finally something that is built in to the operating system that will disrupt the carrier from making 30 dollars of pure profit off of me a month. Text messaging should have never been priced the way it was and I hope that the carriers start to rethink their business model because change is coming.

</comment><comment><USER3> When you charge people $.10 for minimal amount of data transfer you should be losing sleep because of the inevitability of your products disruption. When it actually occurs, years after it should have, you will get no sympathy from me.</comment>


Discontinued Casio watches, 1601 results - <AUTHOR> https://www.casio.co.uk/products/timepieces/discontinued/?page=1 <comment><AUTHOR> This is a revelation. It would be nice to see the dates when these watches were introduced and then discontinued. Still, an interesting stroll through timepieces worn by many. (Still haven't found the models I wore, though.)</comment>


Leslie Nielsen's career got serious when he got the chance to lighten up (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://melmagazine.com/misleading-men-the-late-great-king-of-deadpan-3c4f3acab33e?gi=45a20b5378c4 <comment><USER2> The article mentions his fart machine. A few years back I dug around, found them, and bought a couple. They are here:

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

Later on I was going to a family reunion with a lot of kids, so I wrote to ask if they sold in bulk. They said sure, but the minimum order was 50. That seemed like a lot, but it's probably one of the best purchases I've made. I've been giving them away for years, to the delight of some and the horror of others.

Highly recommended, and 100x better than a digital equivalent. Their analog nature means you can get a great variety of sounds out of them.

<comment><USER3> For others clicking the farbag.com link, your browser might auto-download an *.au (audio) file.

It's just a toot.

<comment><USER4> I didn't click on it exactly because that's what I expected!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is something special to these classical movies.

The naked gun with the queen of england is my all time favorite, for all comedies. The baseball match is unforgettabble!

<comment><USER6> My favorite movie ever.

The statue scene in which he is hanging onto it .. LOL

<comment><USER7> My partner really hated the Naked Gun films. She said they were stupid and not funny, although she loves Top Secret. One day, she got out of the shower about 10 minutes after I'd started one, and laughed at it. She asked what it was, but I would only tell her if she watched all of it.

She loved it. Every second of it. She nearly wet herself laughing at the statue. When we got to the end, she again asked what it was called, and I told her. She glared at me, called me a bastard, and asked if we could watch the sequel.

You won, Leslie Neilsen, you won.

<comment><USER8> The trailers were always pretty diabolical.

<comment><USER7> I didn't remember them, so I had a look on YouTube. You're right, they were awful!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think Leslie Nielsen is probably one of the most underrated actors of the 70's and 80's - he was a fine character actor, natural even - but as the straight man, he's fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER10> [https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/leslie-nielsen-s- gravesi...](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/leslie-nielsen-s-gravesite-2)

</comment><comment> mark-r Thanks for reposting this. It made me go and re-watch Airplane - I forgot just how funny that movie was! It has aged relatively well.

</comment><comment><USER11> For a while, back in the day, is ex-wife was our travel agent (as I understood it they amicably split). Still to this day I wish I had been able to hear some of the stories she had about his goofball side.

</comment><comment><USER12> One of the greatest comedic actors of all time! I loved him in Naked Gun and Airplane!

</comment><comment><USER13> _I 've been swimming in raw sewage.

(pause)

I love it!_</comment>


Hipster Idealists Lose Faith in the Valley - <AUTHOR> http://www.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2014/01/07/hipster-idealists-lose-faith-in-the-valley/

<comment><USER2> _Ugggh_</comment>


CVE-2020-1350 Wormable Vulnerability in Windows Domain Name System (DNS) Server - <AUTHOR> https://msrc-blog.microsoft.com/2020/07/14/july-2020-security-update-cve-2020-1350-vulnerability-in-windows-domain-name-system-dns-server/ <comment><AUTHOR> Sounds pretty bad and while Microsoft says: _" While this vulnerability is not currently known to be used in active attacks, it is essential that customers apply Windows updates to address this vulnerability as soon as possible."_ we will see if this is true given that exploit code is on GitHub.</comment>


Progressive web apps running as native OS X apps - <AUTHOR> https://dev.opera.com/articles/pwa-desktop/ <comment><USER2> Running a website (whether hosted locally or remotely and cached) in a chrome- less browser runtime does not make your app "native".

Please stop this ridiculous mis-use of the term.</comment>


Programming Satan's Computer - <AUTHOR> http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/3482

<comment><USER2> Cool title, but completely misleading.

I thought this paper would be about writing software on top of an untrusted hardware architecture (an increasingly important national security concern, considering that so many chips are produced in foreign countries, and could have hidden flaws purposefully inserted).

Instead, the paper just provides a description of typical attacks against cryptography (man in the middle, side channel attacks). Maybe I missed something as I skimmed through this, but these subjects are much better covered in beginners textbooks.

<comment><USER3> Is there actual research into programming on untrusted hardware? I mean, I gotta think that if you think any part of your computer might be compromised you can't trust it at all.

<comment><USER4> You can send encrypted data reliably over a flaky and wiretapped link. Why do you think you couldn't do computation in a similar environment?

<comment><USER5> Because a communications link is generally only a passive part of the system, it relays the signal and that is all...

Computing on untrusted hardware is like trying to convert a plaintext secret message to ciphertext while an enemy agent with perfect memory is watching over your shoulder, not exactly easy.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Wow Such Chat – chat rooms made fun - <AUTHOR> http://wowsuchchat.com

<comment><USER2> The instructions go by too quickly. Other than that, cool concept!</comment>


A Charlie Rose Exclusive with Bashar al-Assad - <AUTHOR> http://charlierose.com/watch/60263639

<comment><USER2> Guy makes a lot of really good points about American hypocrisy.. Very charismatic, much more so than most US dictators.. I MEAN! politicians...</comment>


TIOBE Index for January 2015 - <AUTHOR> http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html

<comment><USER2> Cobol is above Ruby?</comment>


Ask HN: Best way to fund an idea  - <AUTHOR>

I work as a Rails developer with a firm. As a side project, I am working on an app which deals with health care analytics. Bootstrapping in this domain is very difficult.
I can think of three ways to generate more income and fund the idea.
1. Raise money - Very difficult in India. In India, people usually neglect young guys. A lot of time and energy will be spent on explaining a relatively newer concept. Will bring unncessary pressure as well.
2. Build another products/apps/services and cross subsidize the idea - Thought of it. Even worked on some stuff for couple of weeks. It is very difficult to maintain focus. Still, if I pull something off, it might generate some steady income. 3. Freelancing - I did it for sometime. It went well. I am now thinking of doing it for rapid prototyping - building an MVP for someone in couple of weeks. I do not whether this is feasible or not.
Can any HNer, who has funded an idea on his own, share his/her experiences? <comment><USER2> I would recommend applying for an incubator. It will help you jump-start your startup via mentoring, support and industry connections you will get if you go through an incubator program. Check out, <http://themorpheus.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> You could leverage <http://www.kickstarter.com/> if your idea solves a problem in a lot of people's life. Also, a good way to validate your idea in the open market.

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea is targeted at health care professionals. If it were a consumer app or a social networking site, it would have been easier to bootstrap.

Will checkout the site. Thanks.</comment></comment>


Is PHP the most hated programming language? - <AUTHOR> https://bulldogjob.pl/articles/165-is-php-the-most-hated-programming-language <comment><USER2> TLDR: Being at top 3 so no? [http://pypl.github.io/PYPL.html](http://pypl.github.io/PYPL.html)</comment>


Ask HN: [Survey] One Button Automatic Video Editing Cloud Service - <AUTHOR>

Hello Hacker News,
I am a developer. I was wondering if any of you would be interested in an one button automatic video editing service. What you will do is upload your video on a cloud platform, and algorithms will automatically edit your videos to create interesting content for you. The key here is that this is not a tradition video editing software, and the UI will be minimal. The algorithms will automatically find the important parts of the video.
The assumption I have is that the current video editing software is too much hassle for everyone. Let me know if I am wrong or right! Thx
The following is a survey that will help me greatly!
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1ZtQ7yWtCS9yLDtEGGunXKaDJoY7BAvOABSfSQrG6TqI/viewform <comment><USER2> Hate to be a naysayer, but I think you are reaching too high with this. Knowing how to cut videos in a meaningful way is not something that can be accomplished with current state of the art A.I as it requires a higher level of cognition. You need a human to tell what content is interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the feedback. Perhaps a hybrid or other approach could accomplish this. I can either add human element to process using say using amazon mechanical turk or instead of finding the interesting contents, I would eliminate or organize repetitive contents. My biggest problem right now is finding the people besides me that would use this piece of technology and perhaps pay for it. I still have lots of videos that I would like to edit, but don't have the energy and time to do it.</comment></comment>


Multispectral imaging reveals unnoticed biblical-period inscription - <AUTHOR> http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0178400 <comment><USER2> "If there is wine, send it!"

haha to be alive in 600BCE

</comment><comment><USER3> So, speaking at a larger context:

How approachable are multispectral sensors to build? Is it as simple as filters on a CCD camera? Are they just notch filters, and different notches to segregate different types of light to reach the CCD? Frankly, these types of camera sensors are pretty awesome, as it shows hidden things like they weren't hidden at all.

$64,000 question: how hard would it be to build one?

<comment><USER4> Mostly you're trading spatial real estate on your sensor for spectral resolution. A conmon approach is to use all vertical pixels for wavelength data. By using a diffraction grating to disperse the light vertically you get a view of the world one pixel high and n pixels wide. By scanning the scene (such as an orbiting satellite) you build up the missing spatial dimension of your data.

You can make your own: [https://publiclab.org/wiki/spectrometry](https://publiclab.org/wiki/spectrometry)

Many other versions are variants of this that disperse light in different ways to retain a spatial image.

Other approaches include building sophisticated sensors such as the foveon technology from Sigma.

<comment><USER3> OH, I get it. So in a way, it is like a rotating filter wheel. But instead, you're using a prism to diffract each frequency. So that you end up getting a frequency per line.

You'd have to calibrate the prism for straightness WRT to the horizontal pixels. And I see a calibration needed with a two pure wavelength lightsources, to get a baseline.

Seems like it could be done for fairly cheap. Thanks for the heads up, knolan :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It says, "Get bread and milk on the way home".

<comment><USER6> Context: The text details an exchange of supplies and silver between Elyashiv, the quartermaster of the Arad fortress and Ḥananyahu, possibly his peer at Beer Sheba, located one day's walk (ca. 25 km) to the west. Elyashiv and Ḥananyahu seem to be on friendly terms, with the letter possibly continuing an earlier personal communication. The letter begins with an affectionate salutation ("Your friend Ḥananyahu [hereby] sends greetings to [you] Elyashiv and to your household") and continues with a blessing from God ("I bless [you] by Yahweh"). This is followed by the mention of a receipt sent by Ḥananyahu ("when I left your house I sent the receipt to Ge'alyahu"). Requests regarding a certain purse and an amount of silver ("in the sum of 5 Xar"), as well as oil ("if there is still any oil left at your [p]ost—send it") are made, along with a call to avoid sending a certain commodity, the name of which is indiscernible ("[…] drop it, don't send it!"). The last part of the recto contains some decipherable signs and letters, which, however, do not amount to a coherent text.</comment></comment>


Tell HN: Twitter does not require 2FA to disable 2FA - <AUTHOR> Basically what the title says. Navigate to account/settings/security/2FA. You can disable 2FA without needing to authenticate (via 2FA) first.
I've never experienced this with any service that supports 2FA. All other 2FA services that I've ever used will not allow users to disable 2FA without first proving identity via 2FA.
(I recognize that 2FA is fallible. I am not arguing that it is perfect. But, if you're going enable 2FA auth, you should try to do it correctly.) <comment><AUTHOR> Edit: This is shockingly the case with Google as well. Every other major service provider seems to require re-authentication prior to disabling 2FA.

</comment><comment><USER2> So you log in with 2fa and then remove 2fa? Can't test as I don't use SoMe outside HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> Correct. Perhaps I'm being pedantic but my past experience has been to log in via 2FA, update settings to disable 2FA, then authenticate via 2FA one final time before it is finally turned off. This has held true across many services.</comment></comment>


Smf – We are fast: Latency benchmark vs. Kafka - <AUTHOR> https://senior7515.github.io/smf/write_ahead_log/ <comment><USER2> i'm the author, feel free to ask any questions.</comment>


Google sharply limits Doubleclick ID use citing GDPR - <AUTHOR> https://adexchanger.com/platforms/google-sharply-limits-doubleclick-id-use-citing-gdpr/ <comment><USER2> GDPR has become a pretext for all sorts of product moves that would have happened anyway.

[http://blog.makethunder.com/doubleclick-id-alternatives- doub...](http://blog.makethunder.com/doubleclick-id-alternatives-doubleclick- campaign-manager-dcm-logs/)</comment>


Ask HN: What programming language to learn at the start of a career? - <AUTHOR> What do you recommend someone at the start of their career to learn?
I want to work at startups.
Is python the most future-proof programming languge?
What do you think about learning frontend programming to have more career prospects? I dislike the idea that for backend there are different languges and if I learn python its harder to get php job for example <comment><USER2> Learn Kotlin, you won't be disappointed. It's an ergonomic language with best- in-class developer tools, and the only mainstream programming language that allows you to be productive on frontend, backend, mobile, browser and native. Kotlin also has fluent interoperability with the JVM ecosystem. You'll have access almost three decades of well-maintained libraries for concurrency, math and data science, visualization and monitoring.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd learn Go. It's simple to learn compared to even python (because of type help). I collected some links around Go here:

[https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/programming- languages/go](https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/programming-languages/go)</comment>


Microsoft Xim - <AUTHOR> http://www.getxim.com/ <comment><USER2> Once again Microsoft being pretty low-key with the fact that this is a Microsoft product just like they did with Sway. [1]

      * No mention in the title bar or above the fold.
      * First mention of Microsoft is in the footer.
      * iOS App Store and Google Play links are before the Window Phone Store.
      * Mockups include iOS looking device and Androidy Device (however the largest one might be a Windows Phone?)

[1] [https://www.sway.com](https://www.sway.com) *Although they have now added this annoying Microsoft Toolbar dropdown-thingy which wasn't there on launch day. Interesting.

<comment><USER3> This is from FUSE labs which is a little team inside MS who do research on new experiences and such. They don't really produce 'products' like Office, OneDrive, etc. They make neat demos and if they get enough traction try to influence the bigger products to adopt them.

<comment><USER4> Kodu was more than a demo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For a second I thought it would be some kind of editor vim style but Microsoft made. But no, just an other photo app. Can you still generate any revenue out of this kind of app in 2014? I feel like the market is pretty dense already, between dropbox, instagram, flickr ... plenty of apps already in the landscape, why an other?

<comment><USER6> It's by Microsoft Research. Not everything they make is meant to be a direct revenue driver.

<comment><USER7> Keyword being "direct". Publicly no doubt they have mission statements that read like they're trying to save the planet. Privately, they are tasked with exploring the margins of new paths to revenue. (NOTE: pure speculation.)

<comment><USER6> I don't feel like you are very familiar with Microsoft Research. While I'm sure Microsoft ultimately expects to benefit from their work, it's pretty far out there to suggest that their mission is discovering revenue streams or anything like that. Like, do you really believe Microsoft intends to monetize Haskell?

<comment><USER7> I did mention that I was speculating, so yes, I'm not at all familiar with Microsoft Research.

However, I've yet to work at a place where I wasn't surrounded by p* managers who weren't falling over themselves to get involved with some new idea that would lead to revenue somehow. On the business side of the house, I don't think anyone gets up in the morning if it can't be linked to revenue.

So, yeah, I'm comfortable saying that Microsoft Research is swarming with people looking for new revenue streams. Swarming.

<comment><USER8> That is wrong, how? Revenue streams (and corresponding cash flows) are the lifeblood of any business. It's a nice notion to build an organization solely to do cool things but, if you don't make money somehow you'll go out of business and will never be able to do cool things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Putting the snark aside for a second, if this app works as well as it's claimed to, then I actually think it's an awesome idea. I really dislike handing my phone over to other people, even to show them a photo or video, and if I'm wanting to show something to 3+ people at once there's no truly convenient way to do that anyway. I've already installed this and will definitely be trying it out at the next opportunity.

<comment><USER10> I agree with the use case, but most of the time I show someone a photo, it a fairly quick process. Comparing (1) how you share photos now to (2) how you share photos w/ Xim: (1) "wanting to share photo-> pull out phone-> unlock phone-> open photos app-> select photo-> show people your phone" is a lot faster and easier than (2) "wanting to share photo-> pull out phone-> unlock phone-> open Xim-> select images _- > add or select contacts_* -> send message -> wait for others to receive message-> they pull out phone (if not already)-> they unlock phone-> they open the message-> they are redirected (to app or website)-> they can see the photo"

I don't think this use case is definitive, i just meant it as an illustration of "it will take longer to share photos with Xim."

I think this MIGHT be ok if you only had to go through a laborious process the first time you used the app or viewed a Xim, but I think you have to go through that whole process (minus the adding the contact) every time you share. This app is trying to work at that intersection of cyber- and meat- space, and I think the handoffs will just take too long.

The ironic use case--this could be a great tool for remotely sharing photos. But if you're doing that, wouldn't you be using your phone to talk with the other viewers about the photos? ;-(

* Seems more likely you're trying to show more than 1 photo, as it's fairly easy to show a single photo to many people. __Similar to above, and like you were saying, it 's fairly easy to show 1 or 2 people a series of photos on your phone.

<comment><USER11> what about distance? Can xim do it with my friend wherever they are?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Unlike many in the comments, I don't think this is a useless app. I don't particularly enjoy passing my phone around, and sometimes it's a nice way of showing everyone photos at the same time.

At first I thought this was Nokia Photobeamer v2 [1], but it appears to be a completely separate app.

[1][https://photobeamer.com/](https://photobeamer.com/)

</comment><comment><USER13> This is a surprisingly simple idea which I'm surprised nobody else did first. Neat idea. +1 on you guys for making it so only one person needs the app too!

</comment><comment><USER14> Interesting feat is only one person needs the Xim app installed for all to participate

<comment><USER15> I'm guessing the app has a small built-in webserver - or perhaps relays through a 3rd party webserver - and the others join up in their browser using some kind of websocket like transport? Wonder if they direct the others to the app user's phone's internal wifi IP?

<comment><USER16> that would make sense but they keep more control when they use the cloud instead of a built-in web server

<comment><USER17> Actually, it wouldn't make that much sense. You couldn't guarantee that two phones were on the same network.

<comment><USER16> either way they have to be on the same network, cloud or no cloud, but anyways, most phones nowadays are connected to the Internet...

<comment><USER17> To use a local webserver, they would have to be on the same network (unlikely). To use the cloud based service, they would have to be on the internet (likely).

<comment><USER16> my local webserver is internet accessible (like many)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Thank god; another way to share photos with my friends.

<comment><USER19> I know, right! I mean, there's already Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Flickr, Imgur, Dropbox, Google Drive, Google+, email, MMS, LinkedIn, Myspace, and hosting one's own site. But we need more options to share blurry photos of backgrounds or mediocre desserts.

<comment><USER20> We got the joke.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I assume the idea is to replicate the experience of projecting your vacation slides onto the wall and forcing your loved ones to watch?

<comment><USER22> Yes, and that's actually an activity I (and probably many others) enjoy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Too bad the app can't be installed when you are living in Belgium from the Google Play Store(i don't see a valid reason)

<comment><USER24> Or the UK.

This localised internet is really starting to get to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Trying to turn it into a verb (xim it) and a noun (add to the xim). Aggressive marketing.

<comment><USER26> What's wrong with that?

<comment><USER3> Ask Zune folks how well squirt worked out for them.

<comment><USER27> I agree with your point, but I also want to point out that the term also has sexual connotations, which (in my experience) made up the bulk of the negative comments about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think this app is actually pretty cool, especially in situations where you want to show family at a table photos from your latest trip or weekend adventures.

It is such a shame that the scroll performance on this site is so horrible (performance wise), scroll up and down and you will see this behaviour first- hand.

<comment><USER29> Strange, I used Chromepera and it reports < 10% CPU usage when scrolling the mouse like a maniac.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Nicely done, I'm a bit surprised there isn't more of this. When you see several people there with their phones and only one has the content everyone wants to see, it makes a lot of sense to be able to "cast" it to everyone's screen.

</comment><comment><USER31> This reminds me so much of one of my favourite apps ever - Google Hello: [http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-05-08-n15.html](http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-05-08-n15.html)

</comment><comment><USER32> My guess would be that we'll see more of these shared/sync'd experience apps in the future.

A phone is personal so experiencing the pictures on __your __phone makes it more personal.

<comment><USER33> I don't know if it exists already, but what I would like is a Bluetooth mixing app: say it is installed on my phone, I connect to speakers and I can play music from my phone. Buddies around can connect by Bluetooth to my phone and "play" some other track to me. Then a fader allows me to mix both tracks to the speakers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Better details here: [http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/microsoft- xim/36...](http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/microsoft- xim/3627bc99-5f9d-4bbd-bb87-69eead70e28d)

Excerpts:

 _• Xims only stick around for a little while so you can enjoy the moment with no storage or organization overhead

• Xim is available for iPhone, Android and Windows Phone 8 devices and works in most web browsers

• Xim will initially be available in US and Canada only; we plan to add additional country support shortly_

</comment><comment><USER7> I have to imagine that this is part of a larger plan to rope people into an MS ecosystem by getting folks to use useful utilities one at a time. I can think of another company that did this a few years back with disparate utilities: Google. Recall gmail, Picasa, Reader, Maps, etc. Standalone in the early 2000s and now if you use one, you likely use them all.

Also, a pretty unsubtle rebranding campaign: "Made with love by Microsoft Research FUSE Labs"??

<comment><USER35> > Recall gmail, Picasa, Reader, Maps, etc. Standalone in the early 2000s and > now if you use one, you likely use them all.

I don't think I know anyone who uses 'them all' even from this small list. Of course, Reader doesn't even exist anymore. And I know no one who uses picasa as far as I know. People use gmail and maps, but not really as integrated components or because of their use of anything else in the google ecosystem.

I mean yes, I agree that this is a very google-ish strategy, but I also don't think it's really driven a lot of cross-app use. And when they tried to push G+ through that channel people screamed bloody murder at it.

<comment> vertex-four Picasa doesn't exist any more as a standalone product - its backend is just what you use if you upload a photo to G+, or share a photo from an Android phone, these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Not compatible with Moto G (Android KitKat), this is the first app I have came across which is not compatible with this device.

Edit - "Xim will initially be available in US and Canada only; we plan to add additional country support shortly" Ah!

</comment><comment><USER37> Why did they call it "Xim"? Sounds like a x-window instant messenger to me.

</comment><comment><USER38> Pretty sure something like this was on my Lumia from Nokia a year ago.

</comment><comment><USER39> "Sorry, this app isn't available in your market."

Windows Phone, UK.

<comment><USER40> Yup, same here. Nexus 5, Portugal. They probably region-locked it to the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> This would be great if it was not limited to pictures. There still is not a great way to share your phone screen with a computer or another phone.

</comment><comment><USER42> I don't see the point in this product when I can share photos with others using Dropbox, Google Drive or even OneDrive.

<comment><USER43> I think that it's not meant to replace those. It's meant to replace the act of passing your phone around in person — say, around a dinner table — in order to show photos to the people you're with.

<comment><USER44> So what's wrong with passing the phone around?

Now I have to ask everyone to pull out their phones.

"Mine is in my purse, let me go grab it" "I left mine in the car, oops" "My battery is dead"

Then I have to text/email them the link.

"I didn't get the link" "I have no service here"

Whereas, passing a phone literally takes a millisecond.

<comment><USER45> It leaves you in control of the "show". If you have a series of pictures, for example, you pick when to move to the next photo, and can narrate as you do. You don't have to think about them flipping beyond the photos you wanted to share. They don't have to figure out how to work your phone.

It's certainly easier to pass around a phone, of course, but I can see the flaws.

This is a place where NFC would really be a step up though. Tap-to-share- screen, instead of having to find contacts and numbers and sending texts.

<comment><USER46> I tried it out - the person you're sharing the Xim with can also control the slideshow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I never really had any problems with sharing/showing photos, don't see the purpose in this app.

</comment><comment><USER47> Not available for any of my devices. (Note 2 etc) I guess that means somebody forgot Europeans exist?

<comment><USER48> It requires a US phone number. I believe it will be rolled out internationally too, no idea of timelines though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> The group viewing is a nice idea. But I am not keen to put my photos into another garden.

<comment><USER22> Yeah, would be nice if this launched a little web server on your device with a temporary url for people to connect to. I feel like this is how social networking should work too, but that's a whole nother story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Looks good. Not Available to my devices. I am guessing it is restricted by region.

I'm in Nigeria

</comment><comment><USER51> Shame Android app is restricted by country - can't install it here in Poland

</comment><comment><USER52> I thought for sure this would be a really efficient text editor.

</comment><comment><USER53> I can't find the app in the Danish App Store. :-/

</comment><comment><USER54> I'm not sure if I'll get much use out of this, but at least Microsoft is starting to release their software simultaneously on all three platforms. Hopefully others will follow suit.

<comment><USER55> If you go to /r/WindowsPhone, you will see complaints that MS releases / updates apps for iOS and Android much before WP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Is the website down? Anyone have a cache?

</comment><comment><USER57> Gonna give it a try sometime.

</comment><comment><USER58> So uhhh. How do you pronounce Xim?

KS-im? Zz-im? SHim?

<comment><USER59> According to the way it was pronounced in the video on the bottom of the page, it's Zim.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Unlike everybody else, when it's Microsoft, iOS app comes the last.

<comment><USER61> Is that a joke? It's the first one on my screen.

<comment><USER60> Click on it.

<comment><USER61> Ah, that makes more sense. They're probably just waiting for it to get approved. The Android and Windows app approval process tends to be much faster in my experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> This has Zune written all over it.

"wirelessly transfer a song you want to share to your zune friends, they can play it just a little bit"

Then Steve Jobs said something like:

"if you're on the subway and want to share a song with someone cool, why fuck around with sending a demo song, just take off 1 earbud and listen to the music together"

Edit: "Just put it(the earbud) in her ear" [http://gizmodo.com/207754/steve- jobs-on-zune-wifi-getting-yo...](http://gizmodo.com/207754/steve-jobs-on-zune- wifi-getting-you-laid)

<comment><USER63> >"Just put it(the earbud) in her ear"

There's a whole sharing earwax and hygiene thing I'm just not comfortable with there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Marketing gimmick sometimes frustrates the hell out of me.

1\. (No app required) - but the person hosting the photos need to install the app?

2\. (Download on the Apple Store icon)- Yet clicking on it will give you a coming soon page. Will it kill you to put a "Coming Soon" text below the icon ?

Of course, I am still trying to wrap my head around the use case for this concept, especially when you have a dozen other ways to solve this problem. Oh wait, what was the problem again?</comment>


Coding a Lisp Interpreter in Shen: A Case Study [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.shenlanguage.org/library/shenpaper.pdf

<comment><USER2> _" No, I didn't think about writing typed version of this program. You know, I'm not "disciplined" kind of person so type discipline is (for now) pretty foreign to me. :) I have the strange feeling that types hampers programmer's creativity."_

 _The underlined sentence is a compact summary of the reluctance that programmers often feel in migrating to statically typed languages – that they are losing something, a degree of freedom that the writer identifies as hampering creativity._

 _Is this true? I will argue, to a degree – yes. A type checker for a functional language is in essence, an inference engine; that is to say, it is the machine embodiment of some formal system of proof. What we know, and have known since Godel 's incompleteness proof [9] [11], is that the human ability to recognise truth transcends our ability to capture it formally. In computing terms our ability to recognise something as correct predates and can transcend our attempt to formalise the logic of our program. Type checkers are not smarter than human programmers, they are simply faster and more reliable, and our willingness to be subjugated to them arises from a motivation to ensure our programs work._

 _That said, not all type checkers are equal. The more rudimentary and limited our formal system, the more we may have to compromise on our natural coding impulses. A powerful type system and inference engine can mitigate the constraints placed on what Racketnoob terms our creativity. At the same time a sophisticated system makes more demands of the programmer in terms of understanding. The invitation of adding types was thus taken up by myself, and the journey to making this program type secure in Shen emphasises the conclusion in this paragraph._</comment>


World's first double arm transplant patient delighted (video + article) - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/3158287/Worlds-first-double-arm-transplant-patient-delighted.html <comment><AUTHOR> It took 40 surgeons 15 hours. Quite a hack.</comment>


Programming for Disadvantaged Students - <AUTHOR> http://theopencode.org <comment><AUTHOR> Upvote this post or donate here to support our cause: [https://www.gofundme.com/f/theopencode](https://www.gofundme.com/f/theopencode)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We're a not-for-profit organization that aims to provide students from low- income families the education and resources required to pursue a career in computer science.</comment>


In Marin, if you speed on your bicycle you're now going to get a ticket - <AUTHOR> http://www.mbr.co.uk/news/radar-guns-used-limit-speeds-mountain-bike-trails-339947 <comment><USER2> This is part of long-standing tension between mountain biking and other trail users in Marin. Odd that modern mountain biking was invented in Marin, but there are no dedicated trails (and very few single track trails at all) available to bikers.

And for the record, 15 mph is slow. 5 is really, really slow.

<comment><USER3> 15mph might be slow to a racer or hobbyist who does regular long distance riding, but it's about typical for commuters and the very casual end of hobbyists. Maybe it's slow downhill. It's definitely not slow to pedestrians: a collision with a cyclist going 15 mph can be quite injurious.

<comment><USER4> This doesn't have anything to do with commuters, it's hikers vs mountain bikers in a recreational area.

I wonder if enforcement tends to be more strict when a hiker happens to be present.

<comment><USER5> In previous reports I've seen, they generally speed gun at a blind downhill corner. It's a good choice: the biker is speeding in a location which _might_ have a hiker, so the guys getting the tickets are in fact the ones endangering others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If self-driving cars become ubiquitous in large cities, it is likely that one of the large side effects will be more regulation for bikes, scooters, longboards (electric or not), etc.

When self driving cars start to become a normal thing, accidents with pedestrians or other cars won't be very likely to happen. But accidents with bored teenagers on small electric motorcycles or longboards... those will be an issue.

Biking is much more legislated in cities like Tokyo than San Francisco, and I expect the latter to follow the former. I don't think the "millenials" of 2040 will be riding their bike much.

<comment><USER7> I don't see where this argument is coming from. There's no reason why self- driving cars can't be as or more capable at interacting with cyclists than human-driven cars.

Even if issues with self-driving cars did require new regulation, there's no reason that regulation should favor the cars. Cities and their streets are managed by democratically elected governments. If people like cycling -- and many of us do -- then we can construct the regulatory and physical infrastructure to support it.

<comment><USER8> It's not that it favor cars, but that it favor predictability and thus order and as a result fewer collisions meaning more healthy people!

note: I'd be glad to register and pay for a bike license if that means more dedicated lanes for cycling --so long as scofflaws get ticketed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The article title says "bike trails", but it says "shared trails" in the body. I can understand limits on shared paths, but it's hard to see the point on bike only ones?

" _having points put on their license_ " Do you need a bike license in SF?

<comment><USER10> Where I am, bicycle infractions will land you demerit points on your drivers license.

Which leads to awkward things like being fines for riding a bicycle drunk, losing your car license from it, but still being able to ride your bike because you don't need a car license for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It mentions that getting a ticket can result in points on your license, what if you don't (or claim to not) have a drivers license?

<comment><USER12> From my experience you will not receive points marked against you on your license. I received a ticket for going through a red light on my bike in California. The infraction code used for a bike is the same as a car. The officer noted on the ticket that it was a bike offense and as a result I did not receive any marks against me at the CA DMV and the fee was nearly halved. Had the officer not made the distinction between bike and car I may have received points against my license. Unfortunately that clerical error seems likely to happen frequently.

<comment><USER13> I wonder if that clerical error could result in dismissal of the ticket altogether. Just take it to court and ask for the license plate number of the car, registration, insurance, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Without also requiring bikes to come with speedometers* I think this is absurd. The whole reason speed limits for motor vehicles is a reasonable concept (regardless of the speed limit itself being reasonable) is that all motor vehicles made since about 1910 have had them a speedometer. Of course you can tell if you're moving 30 MPH versus 15 MPH, but speeds marginally faster than 15 MPH just don't feel significantly faster. Without the ability to see your speed, and more importantly, the expectation that everyone on the trail can know their own speed accurately, this smells of an easy cash grab by law enforcement. I'm not even saying I think speeding on a bike on a mountain trail is safe or a good idea. I just think it's unfair to enforce something like this if your average person isn't going to be able to make sure they're complying like your average driver of a car can. If no one mountain bikes without a speedometer then I suppose my point is moot, but I'm not a mountain biker so I wouldn't know.

*A quick search on Amazon reveals many for less than $20, but I've never seen a bike sold with one attached.

<comment><USER15> The whole reason speed limits for motor vehicles is a reasonable concept is that the majority of them weigh more than a ton. Applying similar logic to bicycles is asinine.

<comment><USER5> People routinely break their own bones when mountain bike riding. There is plenty of momentum available to do serious damage.

It's a shared trail. Would it be safe for hikers if someone rode a bike at 100mph? Of course not. To paraphrase Churchill, we've established the need for a speed limit, so the only thing left to discuss is which speed to set the limit at.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> 5mph when passing? I hope they ticket runners too.

<comment><USER17> For a runner a 7 min/mile pace is 8.5 mph.

<comment><USER18> Or a 5 mph speed is a 12:00 min/mile pace, a speed most casual runners are capable of on flats and downhill.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is nothing new in CA. I mountain bike at Saratoga Gap, which has had a 15mph speed limit for bikes for years. The only place they really enforce it is at the base of a very wide hill, where visibility is fantastic, so everyone goes over 15mph. I got a ticket there on my bike, doing 19mph.

[http://www.openspace.org/preserves/saratoga- gap](http://www.openspace.org/preserves/saratoga-gap)

I received points on my driver's license, but I successfully disputed them. A friend refused to show his license, so he was arrested.

<comment><USER20> I'm curious: since AFAIK one doesn't need a driver's license to ride a bike, what's the legal justification for the police demanding to see it?

<comment><USER19> You technically don't have to carry ID, but you are required by law to identify yourself. Some police misconstrue that as being required to show the license. You generally get the charges dropped in court, providing you were honest about your name, but it's a pain. I know because that's what my friend did - identified himself but refused to show papers. He was arrested on a Sat and had to spend the weekend in jail until the court opened on Monday.

<comment><USER21> Interesting. I've often wondered what would happen if you poached National Forest Wilderness trails. Mountain bikes are barred, but equestrians and pack companies are allowed to trash them as much as they want. It sounds like it's probably not worth it.

<comment><USER22> It's a fairly common misconception that bicycles are banned in Wilderness Areas due to their surface impact/damage to trails, but that is not the primary reason—all mechanized and motorized transportation is banned, because the spirit of the Wilderness Act is to preserve areas that restrict travel to low speed and more traditional forms of transportation—foot, horse, boat—and provide a place for people to travel more ponderously.

So while horses do certainly cause damage to trails in high use areas, that's not so much the motivation for allowing them but not bicycles.

I love mountain biking and think there absolutely should be places for it to be done, but I also love designated Wilderness Areas and their restrictions and protections.

<comment><USER21> Thanks -- I hadn't thought of it in terms of speed before. That said, I still think allowing horses in popular wilderness is a bigger mistake than allowing bikes. They turn a trail into either a trench full of shit-powder, a well- churned bog, or a set of awkwardly high and long steps meant for horses rather than humans.

<comment><USER22> It can definitely be an issue and a point of conflict in popular areas. It may be an issue that needs to be resolved with permits—limiting to a certain number of horse users per day per trailhead, for example. I hate permits, but if visitors are beginning to significantly impact the Wilderness (which the Wilderness Act is established to protect against) then permits to reduce impact are necessary.

Where I live, most Wilderness Areas are relatively little used and suffering from post-fire erosion, and so the trails often suffer from overgrowth and fading tread. As a result, horse use is actually quite welcome as it's currently below the threshold where it goes from helping keep the trail beaten in to actively damaging it.

<comment><USER21> You're lucky to live near relatively untrodden wilderness. In my experience as a hiker, many trails in the Sierra Nevada have been beaten into dusty trenches by horses, mostly thanks to pack companies. Quite a few in the southern Rockies have clay-rich soil, which horses will destroy when it is wet (so will bikes, but mud-riding is awful, so most riders will stay away). I have also been in some areas where horse traffic is the only reason that unmaintained Forest Service trails have not grown over.

I think banning commercial packers from the Wilderness would go a long way to fixing the problems with horses. Perhaps with some sort of licensing system, mountain bikers could be allowed as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Speed guns have been used on Mt Tam for at least 25 years. Not sure why these reporters think this is new.

</comment><comment><USER23> There are a lot of fire roads on Mt. Tam and in the Marin open spaces that are shared and are totally safe to go more than 15 mph on, although honestly it varies a lot on how windy the road is and what the visibility is. There are also a few narrow trails that are shared and 15 mph seems pretty fast to be going on those.

Seems like maybe this should be a 20 or even 25 mph speed limit on the fire roads and then a 10 mph speed limit on the narrow trails? Or they should just make some of the fire roads bike only. There are tons of fire roads out there, it seems like it wouldn't be that hard to find some to dedicate to mountain biking. There are even some that already have parallel hiking-only or hiking/horse trails.

P.S. don't ride your bike on hiking only trails. There are bikers who do this (a small minority, but you end up being judged by the worst members of your community, sorry, that's life). This is a dick move, not only because it's dangerous, but because bikes can really tear the trails up and cause erosion.

</comment><comment><USER24> At least the nice thing about running from cops on trails, is that bikes can outmaneuver cars

<comment><USER19> Cops travel at the speed of light via radio, and on trails, they ride bikes. It's usually park rangers handing out the tickets and cops only come if you're being difficult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> don't carry ID. when ticketed, give a false name and address. problem solved.

<comment><USER5> Then the officer calls the home planet to verify that an ID exists for that name and address. Problem worsened.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> How are they going to enforce that? I go uphill faster than that.

<comment><USER27> >How are they going to enforce that?

From the article: with radar guns.

>I go uphill faster than that

I guess they'll fine you going uphill.

<comment><USER26> I read the article... bikes don't have plates so how will they id individuals?

<comment><USER27> _Sigh_... the pedantry on HN is really tough to bear sometimes.

I'm going to take a wild guess and say that they pull you over... You know: the classic approach.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Github is making me feel stupid(er) - <AUTHOR> http://www.serpentine.com/blog/2012/04/08/github-is-making-me-feel-stupider/

<comment><USER2> I totally agree. We use GitHub a ton, but every time I load the first page when trying to do something, my eyes dart across the screen, then a feeling of over-stimulation and weariness sets in. I take a deep breath, relax, and then try to deconstruct their interface so I can figure out what to click next. It definitely taxes the mind to use GitHub on a daily basis.

I understand it's a tough problem domain, but there is definitely room for massive improvement in the UX.

<comment><USER3> I've started using the address bar to get to most things. I usually only need to get to /issues, /commits, /tree/master/filename

<comment><USER4> Github devs: this is a sign that pretty though it may be, something is wrong.

<comment><USER5> I agree that this should spur the Github developers to re-consider their current design, but I see nothing wrong with the general concept of using URL:s for navigating, just as I prefer the Unix shell over GUI:s for many tasks.

Jakob Nielsen wrote about that over ten years ago: <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990321.html> \- I think the gist of his article still holds true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Now I'm wondering if I'm alone in saying that this _completely_ goes against my experience with Github.

The layout at the top of the page is roughly hierarchical with a header for your account (which is standard). You have (edit: my numbers do not match the ones in the article):

      1. where you are (project)
      2. what you want to see (code, issues, etc) (within that project)
      3. branches, commits, etc (associated with the code in the project)
      4. latest commit (to the code in the branch in the project)
      5. code

There's a clear progression from "project" to "code", with only minor hiccups along the way (the description has to do with the whole project, but then it's pointless to have it at the top of _every_ page, so it's beneath a single tab). And the latest commit seems arbitrary, IMO - it doesn't convey much useful information, aside from the 'freshness' of the project.

On the issues page, the 'new' button is next to the search field _because they want you to search first_. If you look for a search bar (standard in the top- right corner), because you should be doing so anyway rather than duplicating reports, you would find the new issue button immediately. This is relatively standard UI for a publicly-accessible bug-report-like system.

There are rough parts of Github's UI, definitely. After seeing a mention that it was hard to find how to change to an organization, I tried - very strange and non-obvious that it's only on the root page (that I've seen). And the different layouts between the main tabs for a project could be a lot more consistent. And commits could use a --graph display.

But the main project page? I've always found that to be the single _least_ confusing part of the entire site, and the most immediately-useful. I've used nearly every control on the page multiple times, and hiding them behind more layers of access would only impede normal use of the site.

<comment><USER7> > it doesn't convey much useful information, aside from the 'freshness' of the > project.

But that's one of the most useful bits of information imo. When I'm reviewing projects to see which I will use, that is one of the two most important determining factors (the other being tests, all other things being equal)

<comment><USER6> There is that, yeah. But that's a lot of screen real-estate for viewing the last-updated-at date for a project, and it's in a different color than other things on the page so it draws your eye. Probably intentionally for this reason.

Do you mostly value the commit's _date_ , or any of the other information in that block? I've only ever cared about the date, personally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That's another thing where BitBucket got it right and clean.

One thing both services suck at is the dashboard full of irrelevant noise.

<comment><USER9> > That's another thing where BitBucket got it right and clean.

I'm kind of surprised that some people feel this way. GitHub has some confusing UI papercuts, but every time I find myself on a BitBucket project page I spend several second in total bafflement while my mind tries to parse their UI.

Something about the way various parts of the BitBucket UI are insufficiently distinguished makes it hard for me to tell where one part ends and another part begins.

I'm not a heavy user and I'd probably acclimate with enough exposure, but I've always thought BitBucket's general fit-and-finish has suffered in comparison to GitHub.

<comment><USER10> From my sparse usage of both I'd say that where bitbucket got it wrong is when they try to copy github. I would love a code host with a fast but bare HTML interface, no effects, plain links, code content on the pedestal.

<comment><USER8> google code?

<comment><USER9> It takes far too many clicks to get to the code or lists of commits.

Code is the last thing Google Code puts on a pedestal. It's barely a step forward from Sourceforge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Though I agree that there are probably too many things going on in the interface, I don't see many buttons where I immediately think "I never use that".

Github seems to be in the tough situation of trying to reproduce a command line interface and all its flexibility in one simple / easy to visualize dashboard.

</comment><comment><USER12> Once you actually get to the commit page it is nearly useless anyway... what I really need out of a visualization is the moral equivalent of 'git log --graph' (which is what many of the better commit visualizers support), not just 'git log'. GitHub is interesting as they are one of these projects that everyone likes to claim is awesome, but where not even a single component of the site is "best of breed".

</comment><comment><USER13> I agree. I feel that their project page has severely declined in usability from a couple years ago. I wish they would hire a UX and/or IA expert to sort that page out.

</comment><comment><USER14> Personally, I've never found Github's interface to be overwhelming at all. Sure they have a lot of content on every page, but I think it's well-designed enough where I can easily find what I'm looking for very quickly. For example, when I want to switch branches, looking for the drop down menu with the branching icon is all I have to do and I usually find it right away.

</comment><comment><USER15> I spent a half an hour trying to figure out how to switch my dashboard to my organization and find the button to create a new repository for the organization. Who knew it was in the News Feed Tab. That needs to change. Clear links for organization management gotta be there.

<comment><USER16> I also spent a lot of time trying to figure this out.

When you can finally find the New Repository link from the News Feed page, it doesn't have an option for choosing the account for the repository. You need to do that before going to the New Repository page...

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you are having problems like this I am working on getting a cli interface with Github. Look at things like issues and commits. <https://github.com/myusuf3/octogit>

<comment><USER18> You are aware there is a quite mature CLI interface already available right?

<https://github.com/defunkt/github-gem>

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The lack of a 'star/bookmark' button on projects is the single, most annoying problem I have with Github... I hate 'watching' projects I really don't care about, but am afraid I would forget in a few weeks...

</comment><comment><USER20> I was a bit confused at first when I was just starting to use GitHub, but got accustomed to it by now. Though making configurable menu or at least a lightweight option would indeed be nice, that would help people get used to the site.

Seth Godin had a good piece on UI and information density the other day: [http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/03/information-...](http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/03/information- density.html)

</comment><comment><USER21> I dunno, I find interface very convenient. It was horrible before (bitbucket was actually better), but things are changing.

On the first project page, header part clearly contains "GitHub stuff" (issues, stats, network), and next goes "git stuff" (files, commits, branches). I can quickly clone or download the project. Issues page also becomes better.

Can't speak for organizations functionality, but it looks OK for usual tasks of most users.

</comment><comment><USER22> I agree, i was thinking possibly two views could be used.. A repository front- page with readmes, download and forking etc (possibly some social side) and then break away a second page with more of a control panel feel for viewing branch diagrams, commits, diffs etc

<comment><USER23> This could be a really good solution. They could even play with bringing you straight to the "Code" tab if you were the repo's owner/contributor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I agree, too. Maybe the less-often used features could rather go to the bottom of the page?

<comment><USER25> I agree. In particular I am not sure why "Clone in Mac" is put at an obvious place. I never tried it until a minute ago. I would rather see a "Download" button there. Perhaps only I have the minor complaint.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Agreed.

I feel that there is too much stuff "above the fold" in newspaper parlance. It's fine for main project pages, but for subsections, such as the project wikis, I wish Github would move the content far higher on the page.

</comment><comment><USER27> One thing that aggravates me to no end is when I option click the github logo on the upper right hand corner to open an additional screen on a new tab, I get greeted with a modal window of 'Looking for the github logo'.

</comment><comment><USER28> Github search is not granular enough, full text search and sorting, search by filename could make things easy

Search within a project would be a awesome option

<comment><USER29> Just press <t> within a project.

<comment><USER30> Wow! This solves my major complaint about GitHub. I wish I'd known that two years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> g-garron Maybe they can create an alternate dashboard, more minimalistic. There is always room for improvement.

</comment><comment><USER31> I couldn't agree more and I got mocked just this past Thursday for saying so.

The awkward treatment of organizations doesn't help either. I'm constantly having to context switch, and it's even worse because I have an organization with one project, so if I click the organization, I have an "Issues" button. If I click it, I'm seeing issues for that one single project, but there is no "New Issue" button because I'm at the org level instead of the project level. :/

</comment><comment><USER32> here's how I solve this problem. (ironically Chris Wanstrath, GitHub co- founder, created the technology my solution uses, and apparently did it in response to a random comment by GitHub engineer Ryan Tomayko.)

the tech is called dotjs. you can check it out at <http://defunkt.io/dotjs>. if you use Chrome as your web browser, it runs arbitrary JavaScript you define for any domain in your ~/.js directory.

my ~/.js/github.com.js looks like this:

$("div.news").hide();

you can check the full file for a couple other hacks: [https://github.com/gilesbowkett/dotjsfiles/blob/master/githu...](https://github.com/gilesbowkett/dotjsfiles/blob/master/github.com.js)

but that's the gist of it (no pun intended).

I also created a Minimal GitHub Dashboard mini-app, built in Node against the GitHub API, but when they changed the API, I didn't bother to update it. I think it was really cool though so I'll link it up anyway. it just pulled a list of your public repos and put links to them in a very readable, very minimal UI.

[http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2010/10/node-miniapp- minima...](http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2010/10/node-miniapp-minimal- github-dashboard.html)

<comment><USER33> Does anyone know why dotjs would be OSX only? Would love to use this in Ubuntu as well.

<comment><USER34> It's not. It's just a simple Ruby server script. Works just fine on *nix machines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I still don't know why people use github instead of bitbucket.</comment>


Torsimany: translate any JSON file to stylish, human-readable Markdown - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/PolBaladas/torsimany <comment><AUTHOR> simply, pip install torsimany

JSON to Markdown converter - Generate Markdown from format independent JSON Edit

<comment><USER2> Is there something wrong with how GitHub renders the Markdown you generate? The two examples given in the repo are not exactly human-readable and apart from bullet points I didn't notice any styling.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, you're right. Looks like Github Doesn't render the Markdown I'm generating properly. You can use [http://dillinger.io/](http://dillinger.io/) (online markdown visualizer) to visualize markdown properly.

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