Show HN: QOTR –  Go off-the record, quickly - <AUTHOR> https://qotr.herokuapp.com/ <comment><USER2> `AES-CBC` is used if no mode is specified (none currently specified: see [1]). Relevant forge documentation. [2]

Currently the README file states that `AES-CES` is being used.

[1] [https://github.com/crodjer/qotr/blob/master/app/models/chann...](https://github.com/crodjer/qotr/blob/master/app/models/channel.js#L105) [2] [https://github.com/digitalbazaar/forge/blob/e14eb1e17fbabcc8...](https://github.com/digitalbazaar/forge/blob/e14eb1e17fbabcc817065c992aa7a0a07330f397/js/aes.js#L44)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing that out. Updated the document.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am confused by your use of "OTR". Based on [1] this doesn't seem to be an OTR implementation as those concerned with encryption might define "off-the- record", correct? I think the term may be confusing.

1 - [https://github.com/crodjer/qotr/blob/master/FLOW.rst](https://github.com/crodjer/qotr/blob/master/FLOW.rst)

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand the name is confusing. I was a long way into naming everything about the project QOTR before I realised that OTR is best used if the protocol is implemented, instead of taking it as general concept.

I plan to re-write the application (at least the front-end, which does all the encryption stuff) based on the reviews and if people think that it is actually an idea worth pursuing. May change the name as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Updated this as a notice on the project README.

<comment><USER4> Good choice: I can second this opinion, since I was too under the impression that OTR was used.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Haven't we already established that crypto served over the internet is not a good idea (because a malicious actor can own the server and provide bad JS)?

Also, does this actually use the OTR protocol?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, it doesn't actually use the OTR protocol. The application actually follows this flow: [https://github.com/crodjer/qotr/blob/master/FLOW.rst#how- qot...](https://github.com/crodjer/qotr/blob/master/FLOW.rst#how-qotr-works)

I understand the name is confusing. I was a long way into naming everything about the project QOTR before I realised that OTR is best used if the protocol is implemented, instead of taking it as general concept.

I plan to re-write the application (at least the front-end, which does all the encryption stuff) based on the reviews and if people think that it is actually an idea worth pursuing.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Turned the service off for now. Will be working on the issues raised at various forums: [https://github.com/crodjer/qotr/](https://github.com/crodjer/qotr/)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is an idea worth pursuing. There is a market for this, and I know I will use it often (especially if nobody else does!).</comment>


PewDiePie fans keep making junk ransomware - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/pewdiepie-fans-keep-making-junk-ransomware/ <comment><USER2> All I know about PewDiePie is that they are a YouTube user. What's the connection with terrorism and ransomware?

<comment><USER3> "Subscribe to PewDiePie" has been adopted by white supremacists. Part of it is due to the 'fight' to get to 100m between PewDiePie (the 'white') and T-Series (the 'browns'). Part of it is also because PewDiePie has or has been accused of retweeting, posting, promoting, etc views, channels, and memes that are racist, anti-Semitic, misogynistic, etc.

<comment><USER4> Everything you disagree with isn't white supremacists. Mostly white edgy teenagers who are just edgy.

<comment><USER5> The person who said "Subscribe to PewDiePie" on camera before killing dozens of Muslims is in fact a white supremacist.

<comment><USER6> And the person who killed five police officers and injured 11 more people in Dallas was a fan of BLM. And John Hinckley Jr. thought he would impress Jodie Foster.

The views of madmen don't reflect on the celebrities or groups they're fans of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Okay, the printer one was fun but this is taken waay too far now.

<comment><USER8> As background for anyone who didn't hear about this, I enjoyed the relatively recent "Darknet Diaries" episode called "Hacker Giraffe".

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > "PewDiePie fans"

More like trolls piggybacking off PewDiePie as a meme.

<comment><USER10> Is the assertion that they don't actually support or watch PewDiePie? Or that they do so ironically? How can we even begin to make these distinctions without a god's-eye-view of all these people and all this fans and all their intentions?

<comment><USER9> "PewDiePie fans keep making junk ransomware" is a different headline than "Virus encrypts hard drive until PewDiePie reaches 100M followers"

The former, for people who only read headlines, implies PewDiePie is at fault, or at least condones ransomware in his name. It's the same (purposefully?) ignorant reading of "chan culture" as the implication that every Pepe meme is Nazi propaganda.

<comment><USER11> A very large percentage Pepe memes are white supremacist propaganda or just blatantly racist. They took something that was decent and ruined it. I mean it's like claiming Charlie Daniels isn't conservative despite most of what he says being conservative and on conservative networks. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, it's probably a duck.

Source:

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=pepe+meme&ia=images&iax=images](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=pepe+meme&ia=images&iax=images)

<comment><USER9> This argument is entirely disingenuous. For at least a decade, Pepe memes were wholly generic. People all across the spectrum used them.

In the last three years, a (dis?)information campaign to align Pepe memes with the alt-right resulted in a massive drop in use of the meme by non-alt-right people, who didn't want to be considered guilty by proxy. You're using the after-effect of the association as proof of origin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > For some misguided reason

These people are some of the most misguided humans our species ever produced.

</comment><comment><USER13> PewDiePie's community is toxic and gross and represents everything that is wrong with the internet and gaming culture.

This does not surprise me.

<comment><USER4> PewDiePie has an audience of 60 million if I remember correctly. For comparison, ~120 million people voted in the US 2016 elections.

If you are thinking that 60 million people are all toxic and gross and represent everything that is wrong with internet and gaming culture, with respect, you're being an extremist. Just like those in that community who are noisy enough to get your attention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Poor PewDiePie. First, christchurch guy and now this.

<comment><USER15> Lie down with the alt-right, catch fleas.

<comment><USER16> How is he alt-right? Let's also label him russian troll why were are at it!

<comment><USER17> It's what the media and the extremist left call everyone who isn't extremist left.

<comment><USER10> This is a biased exaggeration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> More like someone does something for media attention.

Isn't it funny how all of these things happen after the media started using pewdiepie for clicks?

For years, pewdiepie went about his business and nothing happened. Then one day the media decided to exploit pewdiepie for views and all of a sudden, the attention seekers pile on.

<comment><USER18> PewDiePie gets more views on Youtube than the entire mainstream media _combined_ , who pour a shitload of money into Youtube to get their videos promoted because they are losing viewers and can't get the ratings through good content.

Of course they hate the fact. They try to paint him in a negative light at any point possible, which just backfires on them, because they are just doubling- down on the same garbage which is what caused their massive loss of viewership in the first place.

People are fed up of old media pundits and their garbage "news" (or deliberate omission of). Pew News is now the mainstream news. Of course, trolls have taken the opportunity to use PDP to keep trolling the left-wing media, who seem eager to take any bait they're thrown.</comment></comment>


The Top 14 Astronomy Pictures of 2010 - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/12/14/the-top-14-astronomy-pictures-of-2010/

<comment><USER2> The final pic of the Orion Constellation is stunning. But there seems to be so much gas (the colored stuff) covering the constellation. The third star in the middle is almost lost, you have to look at the pic magnified to catch it.

The spectacular Horsehead Nebula is almost lost in there due to the scale. The Orion Nebula: having a hard time locating it due to all the gases covering the pic.

<comment><USER3> Photo link: [http://www.flickr.com/photos/badastronomy/5258701469/sizes/l...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/badastronomy/5258701469/sizes/l/)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I know that HN isn't big on pretty photos.. But these are _really_ pretty - and I certainly learnt from the descriptions (THe asteroid collision and the 3 trillion kilometre collapsing red giant).

Does anyone know what type of gear you need to take a photo of the sun like that? I can't imagine it's good for the sensors of my SLR.

<comment><USER4> To take photos like the image of the Sun in that article you need a telescope coupled with a Hydrogen Alpha filter, mounted to your SLR body. Hydrogen Alpha filters are rather expensive, unfortunately.

Take a look at this Wiki article: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-alpha#Filter></comment></comment>


Talos Secure Workstation – New, Lower Pricing - <AUTHOR> https://www.crowdsupply.com/raptor-computing-systems/talos-secure-workstation/updates/new-lower-pricing <comment><USER2> Yeah, but ... it's still insane :-(

</comment><comment><USER3> Wish them well but I cant afford :-(</comment>


Pin is Australia's first all-in-one payment API - <AUTHOR> https://pin.net.au <comment><USER2> Looks fantastic. I'm interested already and we don't have an immediate need for the API - but even the web UI looks great.

Very little information on your site, though. Some questions strike me:

\- What path does the money take from the customer to the user of your service (e.g. me), and how long does it take to get there?

\- What kind of backing/insurance/licenses do you have? If you're a tiny startup, there's risk for users of your system if you go bust and any money in transit disappears.

<comment><USER3> Very good points. I hope you will put up more substantial information on your web site.

Consider that we are supposed to trust you with our customer's credit card information, their and our money. Currently I'm thinking: Who are you and why should I trust you? There is no information on your site which would give me any confidence. I'm sure you have all the info, but please share it with us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> OMFG THANKYOU!!! We've been ridiculously disadvantaged with no Stripe, Dwolla, WePay, Square etc. So many startups have been launched and funded (in the states) that were possible primarily due to Stripe integration. Not much of a choice here other than PayPal.

<comment><USER5> None of the other services you listed have a monthly fee. But I guess we Australians should be used to being ripped off by now.

<comment><USER6> "But I guess we Australians should be used to being ripped off by now" With such a "dog beaten" attitude I'd say it's self fulfilling. Perhaps wait to see what those fees are, relative to your other options in Australia, before drawing such a depressing conclusion?

<comment><USER5> I know this is likely going to be better than "other options in Australia", and I respect their efforts for making this happen, but that's not my point. I was comparing "options in Australia" to "options in the rest of the world".

The same happens with a lot of different things, such as the cost of computer hardware/software, furniture/home appliances, cars, etc. Occasionally it's possible to work around it: I buy most of my gadgets from Amazon or other US/EU online retailers, and even with international shipping it's cheaper than buying locally. Unfortunately we often get hit hard on the larger, more expensive items that are impractical to import: IKEA furnitures cost 3x as much as in the US, cars 2x as much.

<comment><USER7> Economies of scale, it's a lot easier to sell to 300 million people than 20 million.

Plus we have the 2nd highest minimum wage in the world (over 2x as high as the US, our welfare is almost as high as their minimum wage) and we live in an amazing country, so it all balances out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> contact me at firstname.lastname@example.com to get this into Shopify from the beginning. We really need a better partner in Australia

<comment><USER9> Please elaborate? Would be good to hear your perspective given your experience in the market.

<comment><USER8> Paypal is the most common option in Australia but for one reason or another they never launched Paypal Pro there which means that people are stuck with the older IPN based flow which has some disadvantages ( More confusing, doesn't make it clear that you don't need paypal account, poor Google Analytics integration )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Firstly, its fantastic to see a service that will hopefully provide a breath of fresh air to a sector that has almost become archaic, and therefore difficult to use, in Australia.

What sort of red-tape has been causing you the most trouble? Also, are you partnering with one of the banks?

</comment><comment><USER11> Does anyone have any idea on the background on who's behind this?

The fact that there are no names doesn't exactly instill trust or confidence.

Closest I could get to info would be that the Southern Payment Systems Pty Ltd resolves on a google search to: <http://www.southernpaymentsystems.com/> which seems to share the street address of a Designer(<http://speakinteractive.com/>), a real estate agency(<http://www.eftosestates.com.au/>) and a ruby on rails developer(<http://brownbeagle.com.au>)

[update: never mind, found one of the co founders, <http://dompym.com/> pretty impressive, he's ex SAP and ex Clear Interactive, acquired by the NZ exchange]

<comment><USER12> and by the looks of things, Grant Thomas (fmr coach of St Kilda, 2001-2006). <http://www.ferocia.com.au/> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Thomas_%28footballer%29>

<comment><USER11> haha, nice!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'll say "thank you" after I know more about the pricing and fees and how long it will take before my money appears in my bank account. It's great that you are setting up something like this and I really hope for the best. Would love to use it, but as others have commented, down here we are used to being ripped off, so when I see "monthly charges", I'm already a bit weary. Still hopeful, but a bit concerned.

Also, I really hope this will work for Kiwis as well?

<comment><USER13> $50/month 3.0% + 50c per transaction <https://pin.net.au/pricing>

<comment><USER12> OMFG the fees are the same as the big banks, wrapped in a nicer API.

Suddenly PayPal looks attractive again @ 2.4% + 30c with no monthly fee. [https://www.paypal-australia.com.au/business/manage-my- payme...](https://www.paypal-australia.com.au/business/manage-my- payments/transaction-fees)

<comment><USER11> Presumably, the service will be better. Banks in Australia usually need a deposit of one years of sales if you take yearly subscriptions. Then you need to go to a payment processor, who charge their own fees structure on top. But the banks do give you decent service, in that you have someone to call when something goes wrong.

The worst part of PayPal is undoubtedly the service, I've had experience where they locked the account and demanded social security no.s and registration information (via fax) for which there are no Australian equivalents. After months of them asking for things that don't exist, it took a complaint to the Financial industry ombudsman for them to de-restrict the account to allow us to withdraw the funds.

<comment><USER12> Yeah PayPal has its own problems of course such as the horrible service like you mention. I had a payment dispute once where neither the customer or the seller (me) had an issue, but PayPal had automatically flagged it as suspicious for reasons they wouldn't specify. Mind you that was 1 problem in several hundred transactions, so it wasn't too bad for me overall. I just think $50/month would be hard to bear when you've got PayPal in the same market at no monthly fee and a lower rate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Awesome, thanks for this. A couple of years ago I was trying to get setup with a merchant account at BankWest for online C/C processing - the BW guys in their online merchant team were totally taking the piss. Kept me waiting for 8 weeks without an answer - so in the end I had to go with PayPal.

</comment><comment><USER14> Awesome news. Like many Australian devs I have been feeling a distinct lack of love from other payment solutions. And now I see in a comment above that braintree is on its was as well.

Who knows, maybe VCs will start investing in Aussie based startup as well?

<comment><USER15> Don't believe the hype. It's more difficult to raise capital in Australia, but it's completely possible. You need to network hard in order to make connections, but the money is out there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What are the fees? Does it work in New Zealand?

<comment><USER17> +1 there's absolutely no reason why they cannot get it working for New Zealand -- considering most of our banks are actually owned by Australians, and typically use the same systems!

<comment><USER18> ++ - to note though, it won't be a computational problem, but one to do with regulation, I would love to not have to deal with DPS and BNZ though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Something sticks out like a sore thumb in that API. Where's the param signing with a secret key?

<comment><USER20> This was exactly what I thought as well.

Using an HTTPS connection is all well and good, but it is not enough. HTTPS is susceptible to man in the middle attacks [1], and securing the params with a pre-shared secret key is essential.

The extra cost in 'complexity' is really far outweighed by the (warranted) extra security.

[1] <http://www.thoughtcrime.org/software/sslstrip/>

<comment><USER21> Would you mind elaborating?

ssltrip requires a valid root ca, or an ssl library that doesn't check the signing chain. After using it though, the parameters are unencrypted and so can simply be sniffed.

Are you attempting to reencrypt the parameters with another key? If so then why run that through https?

<comment><USER22> > Are you attempting to reencrypt the parameters with another key? If so then > why run that through https?

I think they are talking about generating a hash from all of the parameters in the request + a secret, pre-shared key. Doing so prevents MITM attacks from changing the parameters.

IIRC, Amazon does this (among many others).

<comment><USER3> Exactly. Have a look here for some information on how to do this: [http://www.thebuzzmedia.com/designing-a-secure-rest-api- with...](http://www.thebuzzmedia.com/designing-a-secure-rest-api-without- oauth-authentication/)

<comment><USER23> This article also inspired me to lockdown my own API I designed, its really good advice. The question is only, they wanted to provide a very simple interface, what is the right trade-off security vs. developer UI?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The sample request is nearly identical to Stripe. Is it safe to say this is Stripe for Australia? What's the relationship between Stripe and Pin?

<comment><USER25> PinStripe, hmm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Can someone explain why a separate payment system is needed for Australian developers? My nieve understanding is that credit cards are global from a consumer perspective (i.e. a credit card will work in any country in the world). Are things different from a developer perpective? If so, why?

<comment><USER27> > My nieve understanding is that credit cards are global from a consumer > perspective (i.e. a credit card will work in any country in the world).

As someone who has credit cards from 3 different countries, I can tell you that's very wrong. I'd like to think my CC works anywhere, but oftentimes when they ask for a ZIP and I don't have one, that's a deal breaker. Sometimes when the person sees the card is from another country (name of country is in the bank name) they refuse to use it, even when it matches my accent and driver's license.

Also it would have been nice if VISA had a global "credit rating" instead of a separate one for each country. Unfortunately, I now have zero credit in my new country, which is painful when I have amazing credit in my previous country. (all VISA cards)

<comment><USER28> _Also it would have been nice if VISA had a global "credit rating" instead of a separate one for each country. Unfortunately, I now have zero credit in my new country, which is painful when I have amazing credit in my previous country. (all VISA cards)_

Pro-tip: if you deal with a bank that has branches in both countries, and you're sufficiently good of a customer that they can justify an hour of work for you, you can get around not having a credit history in your newest country of residence. CitiBank, for example, has an employee in Tokyo whose only job is being attached to an Experian terminal to make credit decisions for American expatriates. (It is highly likely that branch level employees at most CitiBanks are unaware of his existence, so the high-percentage plays are either speaking to their wealth management group, speaking to their "executive relocation" group, or sending the bank a letter.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Really hoping that this will be like the old PayPal, where you could just setup an account (or multiple!) and just go and start collecting credit card payments.

Can't do this anymore as they only allow you to link your bank account to a single PayPal account. Also there are a lot more ID requirements nowadays, so you can't just setup a virtual business like you used to - a separate account for each new website.

I can understand why, but surely a suitably long holding period (account probation period) would solve the fraud and chargeback issues caused by the scammers who ruin it for the rest of us!

</comment><comment><USER30> I really hope this works out, the idea is awesome. I suspect there's a fair amount of red tape to get it launched.

<comment><USER31> I wouldn't say there's a whole lot of idea in this ("bring Stripe to Australia please" is not new) but I'm hoping the implementation and pricing are both great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Great! Do you plan an having a hosted payment page ala DPS or PayPal though? I'd much prefer never seeing my customers credit card number at all.

Also please let me know if you're planning on adding support for NZ too, the situation for accepting payments here is just as dire.

</comment><comment><USER33> I really wish there was something like this that worked globally, other than PayPal.

<comment><USER34> The major problem with financial transactions is that each country (or I guess, _most_ countries) have different laws regarding banking, fiduciary responsibility etc.

Paypal/Amazon/GCheckout work globally because they use CC and charge handsomely for the privilege. Companies like Pin, Stripe and Dwolla are trying to cut out the idea of merchant accounts (which create the major hassle for a lot of small practitioners), but that means tailoring your service for local laws = hard problem.

<comment><USER32> Amazon and Google Checkout don't work globally (for sellers)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I can't tell you how happy I am to see this. I was excited to hear about Braintree expanding to Australia a couple of days ago, but this is much more promising.

Do you have plans to incorporate recurring charges as well?

I've added myself to the invite list.

<comment><USER36> I would be curious to know why you think this looks more promising than Braintree.

Disclosure: I work at Braintree. I'm not trying to shill here - I'm genuinely curious about how people think about our stuff vs. other payments companies.

<comment><USER37> Kinda offtopic: But since you work at braintree, please have a look at my comment <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4069105>

<comment><USER36> I responded to the original thread.

<comment><USER37> Could not find the response :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Ohhhh thank goodness! We've been waiting a long time for something like this. It's ridiculous how long it takes to get set up on WPP or eWay with a merchant account.

</comment><comment><USER7> Holy crap I love you guys so much! :D I have seriously been looking for a good payment processor that isn't paypal for over 5 years now, EVERYONE is US only.

THANKYOU!

</comment><comment><USER39> Regardless of what the other details of this product are, the online payments space could definitely use some extra competition in Australia. Bravo.

</comment><comment><USER40> As a former e-commerce web dev, I cant begin to tell you how much this was sorely needed in Australia. Best of luck to you!

</comment><comment><USER41> AUP? What can I (not) sell via your service?

</comment><comment><USER42> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4073620>

</comment><comment><USER43> I'm so excited! Current payment gateways are certainly a pain point for Australian developers.

</comment><comment><USER44> Absolutely brilliant! I'm so glad you made this. Thank you, thank you.

</comment><comment><USER45> Finally something in Australia with possible potential. No information on pricing other than a monthly fee + transaction fee.

I'm not sure what a JSON REST API is though.

What does "scheme" in the JSON response correlate to? I'm also not sure why so much information is essentially echoed back?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's supposed to mean that the API responds with JSON data (as opposed to, say, XML). "REST" here just means we use standard URL patterns and rely on HTTP verbs (e.g. GET), to get stuff done.

<comment><USER45> Sorry I was probably being overly pedantic, I do understand the concepts of REST and the JSON format. I've never seen it as one buzz phrase though.

<comment><USER46> I wouldn't call it buzz phrase, I see JSON REST API and I know exactly what it is and what to expect from it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Does this work in non-AUS countries (like possibly the UK?)

<comment><USER48> Let's hope the 'gb' in the username is a clue.

<comment><USER34> No, "gb" are the initials of one of the developers. They're targeting Australia first, but I guess world domination is always possible if things go well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> This looks absolutely awesome, Signed up instantly.

</comment><comment><USER50> can anyone that has done the research write up the fixed and variable costs of different payment services and report back to us?

</comment><comment><USER51> sounds great - just what we need

questions: \- any word on pricing? will there be a monthly min? \- also can i set up recurring charges with pin?

great work

cheers

justin

</comment><comment><USER52> You've made me so very, very happy.

</comment><comment><USER53> Brilliant. Thank you. :)

</comment><comment><USER54> I was really hoping that everything would be upside-down on that page.

<comment><USER55>
        if( !Australia )
            document.body.setAttribute("style","-webkit-transform: rotate(180deg);")

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> How about NZD?

</comment><comment><USER9> >> _"Transparent Pricing - Monthly service fee + only pay for successful transactions."_

I cannot see the pricing. Any idea of the monthly service fee and cost per transaction?</comment>


Jeep Hackers Are Back Proving Car Hacking Gets  Much Worse - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2016/08/jeep-hackers-return-high-speed-steering-acceleration-hacks/ <comment><USER2> Companies that make bluetooth ODB2 devices and smartphone apps should pay attention to this too.</comment>


Home Automation and IoT: Sensors, Protocols and Platforms - <AUTHOR> https://www.simform.com/home-automation-using-internet-of-things/ <comment><USER2> This article opens with: "What really would compel someone to actually develop a complete IoT-based home automation system?" Anyone who owns a home knows that optimizing it (maintaining security, structure, cleanliness, function) is an extraordinarily time-consuming endeavor. In my experience, optimizing a home is a highly-underserved job-to-be-done.

<comment><USER3> >nyone who owns a home knows that optimizing it (maintaining security, structure, cleanliness, function) is an extraordinarily time-consuming endeavor.

Absolutely.

I was working on a cleanliness robot PoC a few years ago. What killed my idea what the absolute power hungriness of such devices.

As of now, the industry is focusing on the protocols and security layers, and is trying to fix them. I think the next move would be to utilize ROS or something similar to build low powered robot that can maintain an entire home intelligently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > we would suggest illuminance tests followed by normalizations of the data to > observe deviations under various situations.

I haven't seen anything on this while working in embedded space. If anyone can throw more light on this. Like what tests should go where, and how to make sure that they are successful.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you keep track of links/docs/assets relating to a project? - <AUTHOR> For a given project, we always create directory pages. We used to use Confluence for this, then we moved to GitHub Wiki pages, and now Dropbox Paper. We add links to Figma mockups, Miro boards, Google docs, Trello boards, contact info for clients, etc.
I feel like there must be a better way though. We end up with long documents where you have to scroll and scroll, and everyone has different ideas about how to organize them, well-meaning overzealous teammates litter in links to very peripheral resources, things get out of date, and it all devolves.
Is this a problem other people have? What tools and techniques do you use to keep it manageable? <comment><USER2> We try to keep as much in the repo as possible. So raw assets, markdown documentation etc.

It suffers from many of the same problems, but having it be in the same directory/editor that I'm making a code change makes it more likely that I'll update.

<comment><AUTHOR> That makes sense. Sometimes we still do that for more technical projects like backend services.

But often it's a project manager or a designer or a researcher adding meeting notes, or recordings of usability testing sessions, etc, and at that point the repo seems less obvious a choice.

As a dev, I still want easy/quick access to all of that (and I want to know and be reminded that it all exists in the first place), but the repo, and even the GitHub wiki for the repo both seem not quite right for this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Assuming it's a team: [http://notion.so/](http://notion.so/)

It's a wiki / google doc crossover. It has a hierarchical side-navigation, tracks edits, supports inline tables/embeds, multiple users, sharing documents.

Nice editing system. It uses "blocks" of content that can be indented.

It has a full desktop app on Windows and OS X.

(Apparently there was a mention in an similar thread 10 mos ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18112140](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18112140))

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been meaning to try out Notion. It looks neat, but do you still end up just having essentially a document full of links to your various assets/creative/notes in progress? Or do you actually embed your documents from other services, or use boards or Notion's views, etc so it's not just a long list of links?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I use google colab IPython notebooks to keep track of my project related docs. [https://colab.research.google.com/notebook](https://colab.research.google.com/notebook)</comment>


Awesome tool to help you sell anything - <AUTHOR> https://www.mywindow.me <comment><USER2> I'm gonna give it to you straight: I would never trust your website based on your decision not to hire a designer, I don't see anything done here that hasn't already been done by thousands of others, and the uppercase Y is tacky as shit.

I wish you all the best, but I think that you have some serious work to do on your project – starting with the fact that you're hitting the user over the head with a faux credit card form while loading insecure content on an otherwise HTTPS website.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks man for the straight response. & thanks for your wishes. & u must know that Things repeat on internet. Every other product of today is somewhere similar to some project from yesterday. & the uppercase Y reminds us on why we exist. You may not like it, and i accept it, but many other users do.

The Faux Credit card, as mentioned, its a simple demo to see on buying actually takes place at our platform.

but thanks anyways for your time and response.</comment></comment>


A Serf on Google's Farm - <AUTHOR> http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-serf-on-googles-farm <comment><USER2> This is probably the best content I've ever seen from TPM. Took a lot of negative feelings I have towards Monopoly and effectively crystallized a small subset of the harms in a particular case. Digital capitalism is not so different from the old forms..

</comment><comment><USER3> So in the article he says:

". If we were kicked off the road more than half of our total revenue would disappear instantly and would stay disappeared until we found a new road – i.e., a new ad serving service or technology. At a minimum that would be a devastating blow that would require us to find a totally different ad serving system, make major technical changes to the site to accommodate the new system and likely not be able to make as much from ads ever again."

Is there a framework/library whatever you want to call it that helps with that, I mean something that abstracts you ad serving systems enough that when you need to slot another in its place it's a matter of some configuration properties or a couple lines of code changes?

</comment><comment><USER4> Google having a monopoly on search engines is super scary and it seems no other engine has the hope of rivaling them anytime soon.

<comment><USER5> >implying Google is the only one

I wouldn't say so. First of all, outside the anglosphere and europe google ain't that popular. Slavic countries mostly use Yandex and Asia has Baidu. Whilst Google is globally represented, it does not have a global monopoly, at least on the Search Engine market.

Also I have switched to DuckDuckGo and I must say, that I do get better results, with the absence of personalization. Living in Germany, mostly using english systems and speaking russian gave always half baked results, where searching for anything programming related was a hit and miss affair, even after tweaking search language. With non-personalized results I find myself finding stuff more quickly, at least related to my work.

With the recent wave of "leaving Google" movements, I think it is the single best time for others to step up.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash I switched to DDG and my search results are just as accurate as google. Certain conveniences like showing me store hours and expected wait times are surely missed, but not missed enough to get me to switch back to Google.</comment></comment></comment>


The Inevitable Return of COBOL - <AUTHOR> https://blog.hackerrank.com/the-inevitable-return-of-cobol/ <comment> spaced-out Interestingly, in an article making the case that engineers should learn COBOL, the only reference the article makes to COBOL salaries is at the end:

>"Four years ago, local Fortune 500 employers encouraged the university to offer Cobol courses. Now, graduates who take Cobol electives earn starting salaries of $75,000 compared to starting salaries of $62,500 for those who did not."

First, the WSJ article that it links to does not mention if the $62,500 stat is for all graduates or for computer science graduates, nor if the people in the $75,000 starting salaries are actually working in COBOL. The WSJ article also includes this paragraph:

>[The COBOL] tipping point doesn't worry David Dischiave, associate professor and director of Global Enterprise Technology, Syracuse University, who says, "I don't buy into the idea that there is a shortage of Cobol programmers. If there is a shortage, why aren't employers responding to my calls to get jobs for majors with Cobol experience? What employers do, rather than what they say, matters most."

I've heard plenty of rumors of COBOL programmers making big money, but when I've tried search for jobs the salaries don't seem to compare to a Big-N. I know job postings aren't the full picture, but all the research I've done suggests that even Javascript pays better than COBOL, and gives you more career opportunities. Why should a career-minded student spend their independent study time on COBOL?

COBOL articles also often make vague claims that it is better at some business-oriented tasks, but without a lot of specifics. The author gives this list:

\- The capability for heterogenous "record-structure" data

\- The capability for decimal arithmetic

\- The capability for convenient report generation

\- The capability for accessing and manipulating masses of data (typically made up of heterogeneous data structure).

I work on server-side Java/C++ at a Big-N, doing ETL pipelines and distributed applications, and I have trouble believing that COBOL is better at any of those tasks than a modern language with modern tooling/build system. If COBOL is so great, where are the new adopters? Why is Apache Spark supporting R and not COBOL?

<comment><USER2> Yep, it almost looks like a few companies got together and 'faked the demand' for COBOL devs so that they don't have to pay them so much after the older and wiser maintainers retired.

Or maybe we have a shortage of JS devs? Since they can program everything from linked lists in microcontrollers to machine learning pipelines, and, obviously, are well paid for it.

Edit: Like the other commenter here (sesuximo) said, "want to make a bet?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> COBOL isn't going to return, because it never went away.

<comment><USER4> It's the Latin equivalent of human languages: it can't go out of style and (significantly) change because it's never been in style (at least not since the fall of Rome). That's why it's used for scientific naming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> MOVE 'Y' TO NAILED-IT.

</comment><comment><USER6> Want to make a bet?

</comment><comment><USER7> I've never worked with COBOL. That being said, I find it hard to believe that a selection of existing packages in Python / Node wouldn't cover 95% of what COBOL has to offer.

<comment><USER8> I gather that one of the values of COBOL is that the typical program runs on mini/mainframe computers with the guarantee from IBM or whoever that the code written in 1970 will still perform on a 2020 computer the exact same way - inputs, outputs, etc.

Python does not have the same commitment or track record.</comment></comment>


Vulnerability Discovered in Email Server Software, 5 Million Hosts Affected - <AUTHOR> https://nickroessler.com/dovecot-cve-2019-11500/ <comment><USER2> What's crazy is that this offers remote code execution for around 5 million email servers. As far as bug hunting goes, it doesn't get much juicer than this and the author could easily have sold the exploit for more than the awarded bounty.</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone Hiring Real Engineers? - <AUTHOR>

I was wondering if there are any companies that were hiring non software related engineers?
Are there any startups that are looking for Mechanical, Electrical or even Civil and Industrial Engineers? Or is HN not quite the platform for that?
Please forgive the implications of the title - I did  not mean to imply that a developer or back end engineer is any less of an engineer. <comment><USER2> Checkout <http://www.haxlr8r.com/companies/>, I bet some of them are hiring. (HAXLR8R is a venture fund which focuses on hardware startups.)

</comment><comment><USER3> With the deluge of hardware Kickstarter projects, I'd be surprised if some of them don't have positions for EE's.

* btw - i love that hardware hacking is getting popular again

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm half way through my Motorsport Design Engineering bachelor's degree course and while doing that I'm writing software for clients and for my own projects.

I'm hoping that I can use both my education and software skills after graduation. Preferably in my own business.

</comment><comment><USER5> Double Robotics is hiring! We are looking for both an electrical engineer and an embedded systems programmer, each with experience in motor control algorithms and robotics. email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER6> Amahi is hiring a mech engineer with some design chops to lead an exciting project related to our software! jobs at amahi dot org!

</comment><comment><USER7> There definitely are. You just have to look at the right companies.

</comment><comment><USER8> Petroleum is hiring.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are there startups/entrepreneurs in this industry? Seems like a tough industry to be an underdog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you dress like an engineer, you are an engineer :)

<comment><USER10> But you are a real engineer only if you are an Mechanical, Chemical, Civil or Industrial, otherwise you are probably _digital_ / _unreal_ ?

<comment><USER11> You beat me to it! Reading the title that's what I initially thought, that a 'real' engineer is limited to said fields above?

<comment><USER12> Is there a proper, PC term for it? We all know the dividing line which is meant- roughly approximated by a PE license- but is there a term for it? "Licensed Engineer"?

<comment><USER13> In some states, using the word "engineer" for a non-licensed position or person is against the law. In other words, in some states the term is simply "engineer".

<comment><USER12> In that context, it's funny how upset folks in threads like these get over phrases like "real engineer".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I assumed when OP said "real engineer" they meant "drives a train". They must come from "Real America".

There are tons of mechanical, electrical, and other non-software engineering positions open in the US and abroad. Are you good at what you do? Better than most? Able to not come off as a tool in interviews and writing (you failed this one here, btw)?

And yes, HN is probably the wrong place to look for a civil engineering job. You should probably, I dunno, check civic job boards? Asce.org?

Every engineering profession has at least one significant "society" or non- profit group. Join it, they have a job board.

<comment><USER15> I'm sure you've read the regular postings on HN bemoaning how the eternal september is setting in, and how it is descending to the level of all other internet forums. This answer is a perfect example.

If you don't have anything helpful to add (you didn't - unlike olalonde, cpg, ...) then don't post. Rescuing HN is as simple as that.

<comment><USER2> Seconded. All the more so since OP explicitly mentioned he "did not mean to imply that a developer or back end engineer is any less of an engineer."</comment></comment></comment>


Guardian published Tim Bray's article on leaving Amazon (without asking) - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/timbray/status/1257345369824014337 <comment><USER2> A few hours later..

> "Guardian took it down again with a very civilized apology. A real class > act, thanks."</comment>


Show HN: Natural way to energize yourself No caffeine needed - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/jumpstart-boost-energy-improve/id661556834?ls=1&mt=8 A side project I worked on with my Dad (yoga expert). Check it out and hope it can help you all.
Summary: Tap into your abundant inner energy anytime anywhere. jumpstart coaches you with simple breathing and meditative techniques to recharge and energize yourself in just under 10 minutes, so that you can perform at your best through the day.
Most of us live stressful lives and we rely on coffee or energy drinks to help get us through the day. This caffeine overload is bad for our health and the effects are short-lived. jumpstart helps you skip the caffeine and unlock your natural inner energy.
So download jumpstart, before you get that next cup of coffee! <comment><AUTHOR> Here is the website for the app [http://www.getjumpstart.me/](http://www.getjumpstart.me/)</comment>


A Human's Guide to Words (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/A_Human%27s_Guide_to_Words <comment><USER2> While there's a lot of value in the rationalist literature, there's also a lot of, well, _words_. The standard "sequences" take up nearly a million words, and the introductory fanfic ("prereq material") spans 2/3 of a million. The combined literature is longer than War and Peace plus the entire Bible plus my bloated summary of most of physics, combined.

People with technical backgrounds (scientists, engineers, etc.) have already internalized many of the key ideas as part of their education. It should be possible to convey 99% of the remaining value to us with only 1% of the wordcount. Has anybody worked on making such a resource?

<comment><USER3> This particular collection of blog posts is IMO the most valuable part of that canon. It _does_ have some redundancy, since some points are worth belaboring -- but if you'd like to skip that and just read the parts that interest you, there's an introductory post with one-paragraph summaries of each one:

[https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FaJaCgqBKphrDzDSj/37-ways- th...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FaJaCgqBKphrDzDSj/37-ways-that-words- can-be-wrong)

<comment><USER4> I agree that this is the high point of the Sequences.

In my view, the two most important ideas are EY's idea about what the two alternate neural architectures "look like from the inside" for concepts, and the combinatorio-spatial metaphor for alternative regimes of concepts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ah, the Parable of the Dagger. Most people wouldn't be surprised if, when looking into a shed with word "S * * T" written on it in large letters, they'd see a shovel, a garden rake, a couple of empty buckets, and a broken wheelbarrow but no feces. Yet, write "This shed is full of manure. The previous sentence and this sentence either are both true, or both false" on the shed, and they apparently _will_ be surprised to find garden tools inside.

</comment><comment> a-nikolaev Isn't LessWrong a pseudo-intellectual personality cult with lots of big words but little substance? I wonder how one can produce this much output tho.

<comment><USER6> Just a bit long-winded, I think. It probably boils down into some useful stuff, but I'm not entirely sure because the here-we-go-again prose pushes me away. It's not crankery, certainly.

<comment> a-nikolaev Yeah I agree. I think I feel the same about their work actually.. Calling it "pseudo-intellectual" is too provocative on my part.</comment></comment></comment>


Famous mountain lion P-22 has made himself right at home under an LA porch - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/04/14/famous-mountain-lion-p-22-has-made-himself-right-at-home-under-a-los-angeles-porch/

<comment><USER2> More information: [http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2015/04/p-22_is_holed_up_u...](http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2015/04/p-22_is_holed_up_under_a.php)

Including this bit: "P-22 is remarkable for having traversed the 405 and 101 freeways and many miles of inhabited terrain before reaching Griffith Park and being confirmed by trail cameras." The 405 is by some measures the busiest freeway in the country.

Another poignant detail is that, although there is a lot of wild space in LA near where the cat is, there is no known female there for him to mate with. He may have to cross the freeway again.</comment>


The Dying Art of Disagreement - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/09/24/opinion/dying-art-of-disagreement.html <comment><USER2> I've found healthy disagreement to be one of the most productive forces in my work. Another few interesting reads on the subject:

[https://www.brown.edu/academics/philosophy/sites/brown.edu.a...](https://www.brown.edu/academics/philosophy/sites/brown.edu.academics.philosophy/files/uploads/EpistemologyOfDisagreement.pdf)

[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemic-self- doubt/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemic-self-doubt/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I have come to be so uncomfortable with verbal conflict I try very hard to avoid disagreement. I have spent too much time with people who by a combination of inclination, temperament and life skills can "win" any argument, irrespective of the merits of the matter under discussion.

The TL;DR here is that some people prefer winning to win-win even in conversation.</comment>


Ask HN: How do I go from abstract concepts to a pitch - <AUTHOR>

tl;dr: How can I go from a huge, abstract concept into a presentable pitch?
Hey folks, I need your help. I've been thinking about how we present ourselves in the internet and some ideas have come out of these meditations:
1. Tastes define people. You can get a good picture of someone by knowing what they like and and what they don't.
2. The systems that deal with this kind of data today are infants. They're mostly binary ("Like/Don't like") or linear ("this movie is 4/5 stars"). This info. tells me what you like but not why you like it. Advertisers and others rely on the premise that you know your target, but knowing only what they like is far from perfect. The why can give you a lot more information to understand the individual.
3. Understanding more about individuals is useful from a commercial point of view (greater segmentation and higher rates of success) and from a personal point of view too (I get to know you better).
4. Having a multi-dimensional representation of people's tastes can give me a ton of information that I'm currently missing and this can be lucrative. AFAIK there are not many people working commercially on this [0].
I think it's possible to build a successful product on top of these ideas, but if a friend asked what I'm building, I wouldn't know how to compress these thoughts into two phrases that succintly explain what I'm trying to do.
=> How do you go from a set of ideas like this to something you can pitch to someone else?
[0] OkCupid (and probably others) take a binary or linear approach and then merge the results into a matrix that helps them make predictions. It's better than a simple 0/1 but it's still making decisions on a superficial level. <comment><USER2> Shameless plug: I run a pitch-creation service at <http://pitchremix.com>, and I'd be glad to help you out.

\--

Some general thoughts:

1\. Always dumb down your language. Not necessarily 2nd grade English, but definitely avoid words like "multi-dimensional representation" and concepts like "binary or linear". Most educated people know what you mean by this, but it adds an extra level of unnecessary complexity to your pitch. I shouldn't have to think about what you mean by "binary taste systems". When you give me a two-sentence description of your company, I should know _instantly_ what you do.

2\. Once you've simplified your language, work on describing _what you do_ in as straightforward terms as possible. There was a good article on HN a couple days ago about applying to HN; in it they nailed how to describe something like Google:

 _Google is a website. A user comes to the website and sees and text box and a submit button. He types in words into the text box and clicks on the button. Google then shows him a list of websites that contain the words he just typed in._

[http://www.acunote.com/blog/2012/10/y-combinator- application...](http://www.acunote.com/blog/2012/10/y-combinator-application- insiders-guide.html)

Notice how it doesn't take for granted that the person knows what a "search engine" is. Obviously in this day and age, everyone knows what a search engine is. But they didn't 5-10 years ago. Today, everyone might not know what you mean by "a matrix that helps make predictions" or a "multi-dimensional representation of people's tastes".

3\. Now that you've described what you do in as simple terms as possible, tell me

a) why this is a problem and b) why you are the solution

\--

Hopefully that was helpful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for taking the time for this Keifer. I don't plan to include the "big words" in the final description but I wanted to put them into the discussion so people could understand what I was talking about :)

That Google description is amazing and it gives me a skeleton to work with. Thanks!

<comment><USER2> No problem Federico. If you can distill your ideas down into a simple message, you'll be fine. Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It seems is all about "context". A user might like an article about current election. But what does that "Like" mean? Does he actually like the article? Or maybe he liked it because it's clearly ridiculous (almost a joke in his opinion?).

Knowing that a user like let's say "Book X" but no context of "What he liked about Book X" sounds less powerful. But at the same time: Easy to quantify.

The "Having a multi-dimensional representation of people's tastes can give a ton of information" needs to be leveraged against the noise the insignificant contexts of people's tastes introduce. That IMO is half what the pitch should be about.

How to quantify reliably these "contexts" of people tastes. How to exploit them in advertisements. And how this approach is better than let's say, FB's powerful ad creation tool based on "the graph" is only part of it. You'd also need to tell, how are you planning to get your critical mass. Your approach needs to be: novel enough, pretty enough, useful enough, and viral enough, for users to get attracted to start using your tool.

<comment><AUTHOR> I also like the idea of exploiting the multiple levels of people's tastes as the selling point of this so I will be basing my explanation on it. Thanks for the feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd say do two things up front, tell me who the customer for your product is going to be and why they will want to buy it. Then get into the details. Amazon has one technique, start with the press release you would send out once your product launches which helps you to do this.

Say. I'm doing X, which will let Y do Z. For you I'd say this is... We're building software that will not just tell people what they like but why they will like it. This will let retailers be better at sell products to consumers which is why they will license our tool.

I'm sure you'll want to change what I've written but it seems like a start at saying what you're going to do.

<comment><AUTHOR> I love the idea of starting with the press release, trying it out right now, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The best way to pitch something is to start executing on your idea so you know exactly what it is you're trying to do.

Much like how you cannot really know something until you can explain it to someone else, you cannot pitch an idea until you understand its execution.

</comment><comment><USER6> A pitch is typically the _abstract_ of your story/idea/business etc. Not the other way around. Try thinking about it that way. To mix metaphors slightly, what you've laid out might be how an art crtic might look at art, but not how an artist would actualy approch his work.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, I think I chose the wrong words when I used "pitch" and "abstract" when I really wanted to see was how to make a series of ideas more concise.

I hope you don't mind but I'll be stealing your art critic analogy :)</comment></comment>


Rideshare drivers given citizen arrest by SF International Airport officials - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/07/rideshare-drivers-given-citizen-arrest-by-sf-international-airport-officials/

<comment><USER2> So, can i set up a bar in my garage like homer simpson and start selling alcohol without a liquor license if i only accept payment in donations?</comment>


Successful Site in 12 Months with Google Alone - <AUTHOR> http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/2010.htm <comment><USER2> Pretty basic stuff. None of it newsworthy. I notice that right now it's #8, but in the classic view it's not even on the home page. This might be one indication of lower quality on the site.

<comment><USER3> 38 minutes later they are showing it at 3 (on /classic) and 4 on the home page.

<comment><USER4> This is precisely the problem with /classic -- even old (classic?) users use the main home page, so they're going to vote up stuff they see there. The front page is so path-dependent that taking out certain votes after-the-fact is never going to make big changes.

<comment><USER5> Maybe 'classic' users should be shown the classic leaderboard by default?

Alternatively, maybe classic users have the same preferences, but check the site less frequently... so they follow the newer population but at a lag.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not proud of it but I did some SEO 'stuff' for a local company (gas money) and there really was only so much I could do; they were using a flash as their navigation that targeted an iframe to generate it's content pages, if you think that isn't bad enough, I had no access to any of the *.fla files to do what I needed to. I even tried working around this with JavaScript, but it ended up not being completely compliant in older versions of firefox. . .so what did I do?

I said fuck it, and rolled back their index page back to HTML4 transitional and, low and behold, it actually worked. In fact, it worked so well that I've grown to become suspicious of XHTML.

<comment><USER7> The pendulum has finally swung away from XHTML; developers are starting to understand that HTML is _not_ inferior to XHTML. The HTML5 unification process -- such that XHTML and HTML are actually just syntactically different -- should help kill the XHTML-is-better meme for good.

<comment><USER6> roger wilco

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article has some good points, even if some are rather outdated. Published in 2002!

<comment><USER9> "Remember, 80% of your surfers will be at 56k or even less."

Yeah.

<comment><USER10> That's it, really. The rest of this is good stuff. Especially considering it's 7 years old.

<comment><USER11> Well, I'd also add that adding a blog to a site can accomplish some of what he recommended (like adding a page per day).

Also, using mod_rewrite and clever routing can accomplish things like folder names with keywords.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This post was the SEO bible back in 2003, and a lot of folks used it to go back to basics following the infamous Google "Florida" update. I think it's held up pretty well.

In addition to WMW, Brett runs a pretty good SEO conference called Pubcon.

</comment><comment><USER13> "If you have the budget, then submit to Looksmart and Yahoo." "Submit the root to: Google, Fast, Altavista, WiseNut, (write Teoma), DirectHit, and Hotbot."

This article is more than a little past its prime.

</comment><comment><USER14> Anyone have recent experience in whether search keywords in the domain name itself matter?

Separately, what about subdomains?

<comment><USER15> Yes, I am very interested in this exact same question.

<comment><USER16> I find the keyword in the domain does help, but it really isn't worth chasing to the point of having a stupid name.. What you really want is an "exact phrase match"

I.e. "On sale laptops" gets searched for 19.9k times a month <https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal>

and position 1 is likely to get nearly 40% (if not more) of those clicks [http://www.jaygeiger.com/index.php/2008/11/05/percentage- cli...](http://www.jaygeiger.com/index.php/2008/11/05/percentage-clicks-by- position/)

Thus if you can own OnSaleLaptops.com you stand to get around 10-30k hits/mo surely you can monetize that :/

hope these answers were ok, they are just my experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> oldddddddd</comment>


Review Board 2.5 released with many improvements for code and document review - <AUTHOR> https://www.reviewboard.org/news/2015/10/28/review-board-2-5-is-here/ <comment><USER2> I'm a great fan of ReviewBoard, the best opensource code review tool. Great to see that they are improving. Its greatest problem is the difficulty to install. Does anybody knows about an easy downloadable virtual machine image?

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the compliments!

Installation difficulty seems to very much depend on the environment. On many systems, it's trivial. A couple commands, and you're good to go. On others, it's far more difficult.

I'd love to hear where you've hit problems. One of my primary tasks at this moment is improving our installation story for the systems where it's more difficult, and knowing what problems people are hitting will help me in that work.</comment></comment>


Show HN: SlimWiki - Beautiful, Free Wikis for Teams - <AUTHOR> http://slimwiki.com

<comment><USER2> The ability to export and "increased" storage for paid accounts, but neither are expounded on. How is the data exported? How much storage does each tier get?

Also, how would this play with a custom domain (if it's possible)? What about security; is anything encrypted or secured at all?

This looks really nice, and the editor is a pleasant change from the usual early-00's look of some PM software. But for services that I plan to put business assets in (like all of the company's shared knowledge) I need more information before taking the leap.

<comment><AUTHOR> Export is available under the accounts menu, right now fairly simple, export as HTML or Markdown, we will make this much richer.

Custom Domains coming soon :-)

The whole site is HTTPS so all traffic is encrypted. We are also adding features for redaction which will be strongly encrypted.

Thanks for the editor comments :-) it is an early version but we wanted to ship and get feedback from real users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very slick. Nice interface, nice design. I can see using this.

A few thoughts:

How does the account system work? When I go to log in, I just provide my user information. This means I can only be part of one SlimWiki at a time? This seems like a pretty big limitation for people who might have a company one, one to organize side projects with friends, etc. (For that matter, why is company name required when this could be for side projects with friends just as easily?)

It might be helpful to have an index of all pages (sorted by most recent edit perhaps). I can easily see totally forgetting what pages you have, and while you can search for them, how can you search if you've forgotten what you're searching for?

I can't rename or delete collections, so if I make a typo in the name, I'm stuck with it existing forever. Also for collections, it might be helpful to have a permalink to an index page for the collection instead of just the sidebar. As it stands, you can't link to a collection listing.

Is there anyway to share a page (or provide full read-only access) with someone outside the company?

Somewhat related, I would much rather pay for some service level and be able to add and remove people with various permissions as I see fit (like controlling access to Google Docs) than pay per user per month.

Some day someone is going to ask, so it might as well be me now... is a self- hosted option planned for the future?

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually you can be a member of multiple wikis, we just haven't exposed the ability to created new ones yet. (btw Help is just another wiki).

Recently visited pages and page index coming soon as is the ability to delete and rename collections.

Good suggestion on share, could perhaps create a short lived url.

Self hosted definitely possible but we are really focussing on the cloud customer base right now.

Thanks for the really detailed feedback :-)

<comment><USER3> I found a layout bug:

[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8mKPGVX0X-0UFZ0cWo0MW1ldnc...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8mKPGVX0X-0UFZ0cWo0MW1ldnc/edit?usp=sharing)

FF 30, Windows 7

<comment><AUTHOR> Ouch, thanks! :-)

<comment><USER3> Another one:

[http://youtu.be/hWy2AXpVCXo](http://youtu.be/hWy2AXpVCXo)

<comment><AUTHOR> Damn, you are on fire Daniel! :-) thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Indeed a nice interface, particularly the direct drag-n-drop to paragraph for attaching/embedding images.

A few bugs to report: 1. When I select some text the popup menu doesn't include a + button. 2. The hover menu for a picture has no expand button, only a shrink button. 3. Ctrl-Z doesn't allow me to undo deleting an image.

Some bike shedding: Your favicon is not very distinctive amongst 15 other tabs - perhaps add a W over the feather, or make the feather a white silhouette on black - to match your top bar. I accidentally clicked the cross when trying to drag an image - the hover menu appeared over an image, perhaps make the menu appear above/below the image (like the text menu does) to avoid a race condition.

Take these with a grain of salt though. I like it, but I'm not in the market to become a customer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback :-)

You are right the icon should probably be a + instead of a link for consistency. The image shrink button will expand when clicked once more, but yes, the icon should change!

Please give us a vote if you like what you see so far! ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> BTW please give us your vote if you like what we are doing, we are small and need the love! :-) <3

</comment><comment><USER5> demo?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sign up for free, takes 2 seconds and you get an instant wiki to play with.

We are pretty new so would love any feedback! :-)

<comment><USER6> Consider making a short (~30 sec) movie about your product.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good advice, definitely considering it :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


WxWidgets 3.1.0 Brings Better HiDPI Support, WxQt with Qt5 - <AUTHOR> https://www.wxwidgets.org/news/2016/02/wxwidgets-3.1.0-released/ <comment><USER2> Back in the early nineties I worked on a couple of projects that used wxWidgets (it was still called wxWindows then) to target MS Windows and Motif on Unix. I'm amazed to learn that it is still around and being used.

I remember it as being quite a nice library with a decent API for its time. There are probably some useful lessons to be learned from its longevity.

<comment><USER3> I've used it in production code for the last 10 years. Used in both C++ and Python flavors of the lib ... works great!

<comment><USER4> I have too but I don't like it and feel I would have been better off with qt.

<comment><USER5> Yup. WxWidgets was probably the least useful graphical development environment I have used. In particular, many of the GUI elements don't expose their inner widgets. For example, when I used it, I wanted to change the font of a label in a tabbed window. The tabbed window widget provided no access to the font object at the C++ level- I suppose you could subclass, but that wouldn't propagate tot he Python generated classes.

You're better off just using qt: they put a lot more work into making it a useful environment, it runs a lot more places.

<comment><USER6> > In particular, many of the GUI elements don't expose their inner widgets

But you know why, right? It's because it's supposed to be both cross-platform and native, so a particular platform may not use a nested label widget in a tabbed window, so it can't give you such an object.

<comment><USER5> all the native platforms that qt supports support nested label widgets. the wx class _has_ that member variable, it's just private with no accessor.

<comment><USER6> Maybe my information is out of date, but I didn't think Qt supports any platforms natively at all. So Qt can give you a label widget, because it's creating the controls itself. They aren't really native controls.

If you look at the Windows implementation for the wxNotebook (which I guess is the class you mean), you can see it doesn't use a nested widget for the tab label. The field may exist, but this implementation doesn't use it and instead it uses standard Windows API calls like TabCtrl_SetItem, which doesn't allow you to set a font. It only allows you to pass in a char* string.

[https://github.com/wxWidgets/wxWidgets/blob/master/src/msw/n...](https://github.com/wxWidgets/wxWidgets/blob/master/src/msw/notebook.cpp#L389-L413)

[https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/desktop/bb7...](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/desktop/bb760554\(v=vs.85\).aspx)

So on Windows what do you expect it to give you if you ask for the label widget if there isn't one? Pretend there is one and give you some kind of facade object? What should happen if you try to set the font? Since the API they're using just doesn't support it.

I think the Windows API may allow you to subclass a tab to draw it yourself and use fonts, but that's asking a lot. And there still isn't really any label widget for them to return even if they did that!

<comment><USER5> Yes,you are correct: Qt uses themes and styles to configure its internally rendered widgets so they appear native.

[http://doc.qt.io/qt-4.8/style-reference.html](http://doc.qt.io/qt-4.8/style- reference.html)

In the case of windows, you can either use the char * methods, or you have an owner-controlled widget which is a rendering area. That's what Qt does. Combined with Qt's windows style, you get somethign that looks native by default, but is customizable.

This seems to me to be a far more productive approach that trying to come up with an API that supports only the common subset of features shared between Apple's UI toolkit, Windows UI toolkit, and Linux. Note that qt also supports embedded devices with raw frame buffers; you can make a UI that looks nearly pixel identical to Windows on that platform.

<comment><USER6> > This seems to me to be a far more productive approach that trying to come up > with an API that supports only the common subset of features shared between > Apple's UI toolkit, Windows UI toolkit, and Linux.

But an API with the common subset of features is the whole philosophical point of wx! If you're going to criticise them for that you might as well criticise screwdrivers for turning screws. That's what they were built for.

<comment><USER5> Well, then I disagree with wx's approach. Not only is it more inflexible, the qt solution of creating a styled UI that can be adapted to look native, while being portable and not preventing people from customization, seems to be more flexible.

Note also that Wx runs on top of Qt. Why not drop Wx and just use Qt directly?

<comment> mark-r Wx doesn't run on top of Qt, it simply has an option to use Qt as its back end engine in place of e.g. the Windows native API. You can do a Windows build that doesn't have Qt anywhere in sight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> WxQt sounds a bit of overkill.

<comment><USER8> That's the main idea of wxWidgets - it doesn't have its own GUI backend (wxUniversal really doesn't count) but uses other native frameworks such as win32, cocoa gtk and now QT too. So it will probably look nice and native in say KDE environment.

<comment><USER2> I suspect fithisux's point is that Qt is _itself_ a cross-platform library that abstracts the underlying gui.

<comment><USER9> And I suspect albeva's point is that Qt is _technically_ cross-platform but _practically_ will look odd on every platform but native. GTK is exactly the same, _technically_ cross-platform but practically a GTK application on Windows or OSX stands out like a sore thumb and behaves weirdly.

<comment><USER10> > but practically will look odd on every platform but native

That's absolute nonsense. First of all there's no "native" platform to Qt _because_ it's cross-platform, and that's taken extremely seriously. Second of all, Qt apps are extremely well integrated on Windows, OSX and Linux alike.

There's tons of examples of commercial Qt apps exactly for that reason. What you say is true only for GTK, not Qt.

Disclaimer: Lead dev/designer of LXQt.

<comment><USER11> > _Second of all, Qt apps are extremely well integrated on Windows, OSX and > Linux alike._

I've never seen a QT app that I couldn't immediately tell apart from a native OS X/Cocoa app -- with the exception of Skype, which still doesn't look 100% native, but at least looks like it has a decent skin.

<comment><USER12> isn't it possible that you've seen qt apps you couldn't tell apart and therefore didn't realise they were built with qt?

<comment><USER11> Nope, I follow UI toolkits pretty closely and always try to find a native app for a given task first and foremost. After that QT is the second best option, GTK somewhat worse, and Swing and other monstrocities to be avoided at all costs.

It's not subtle either, these things always stick like sore thumbs -- only exception are some that only use very basic widgets and delegate 90% of the work to native ones (like native file open dialogs etc).

But let's see, if you have any

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> With my consulting work, I still end up doing a lot of desktop application development. I've been on the lookout for a GUI toolkit that I could use to replace WinForms in my workflow. Ideally, it'd be cross-platform, support native widgets, and provide the de facto standard OO API that every other GUI toolkit has converged on. I know WinForms doesn't check all those boxes, but I see no point in moving to WPF which checks even fewer.

So I get excited when GUI toolkit projects get posted on HN. And then I'm usually deflated when I look at the screenshots. I know they haven't built these programs themselves, so it's not necessarily their fault that these developers have gone with the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink style of UI design. But they also chose to feature these particular projects, so someone there thinks these are good examples, which does not speak well towards their commitment to enabling good design. [https://www.wxwidgets.org/about/screenshots/](https://www.wxwidgets.org/about/screenshots/)

Most of these examples feature something you should never do: selectively replacing the standard widgets from your operating system's toolkit. Either create/use a different toolkit entirely or use the defaults, don't mix and match.

It's disheartening to think that, in 2016, the least-bad way to design a UI is to wrap up a browser as a widget and sling HTML/CSS.

<comment><USER14> I'm really not sure what you mean. wxWidgets is a wrapper around the underlying GUI framework.

AFAICT, all of those screenshots are using the standard wxWidgets UI elements, with the obvious exceptions of the audio waveform, the on-screen keyboard, and the 3D graphics widget, which will not be standard components in any GUI toolkit.

The variation is due to the users taking the screenshots using different themes or styles in Gtk, KDE, Windows, etc..

<comment><USER13> I was not talking about those very purpose-specific widgets. I know they aren't standard components. I'm also not talking about theme- or OS-specific differences. I'm talking about the fact that few of the examples maintained a 100% consistent look and feel _within_ their own theme. These are not nitpicky things. Maintaining visual consistency between applications is key to achieving usability. Here are some examples:

All of the buttons are non-standard, but the gridview headers and tab controls are standard: [https://www.wxwidgets.org/about/screenshots/cars-hotsurf- msw...](https://www.wxwidgets.org/about/screenshots/cars-hotsurf-msw.png)

Non-standard toolbar buttons, repositioner handles, and rendering and location for tool-window close boxes: [https://www.wxwidgets.org/about/screenshots/audacity- msw.png](https://www.wxwidgets.org/about/screenshots/audacity-msw.png)

Skinned background and non-standard grouping panels, but standard buttons, menus, textboxes, etc: [https://www.wxwidgets.org/about/screenshots/boinc.jpg](https://www.wxwidgets.org/about/screenshots/boinc.jpg)

Non-standard coloring on buttons in toolbar: [https://www.wxwidgets.org/about/screenshots/ginkgo- windows.j...](https://www.wxwidgets.org/about/screenshots/ginkgo-windows.jpg)

Link-buttons used for commands ("Run Benchmark") and reskinned, giganto elements mixed with standard, tiny elements: [https://www.wxwidgets.org/about/screenshots/sysmark2012.jpg](https://www.wxwidgets.org/about/screenshots/sysmark2012.jpg)

An MDI hacked together out of grouping panels: [https://www.wxwidgets.org/about/screenshots/trident- msw.jpg](https://www.wxwidgets.org/about/screenshots/trident-msw.jpg)

There was absolutely no reason to reskin these buttons and textboxes. Skeuomorphism is bad design: [https://www.wxwidgets.org/about/screenshots/audio- evolution-...](https://www.wxwidgets.org/about/screenshots/audio-evolution- msw.png)

A hacked together Ribbon view out of a tab-view placed in the toolbar location, but they also include a separate toolbar section. Finally, that "calculate" button should _follow_ its config elements, not precede them: [https://www.wxwidgets.org/about/screenshots/coppercube- msw.j...](https://www.wxwidgets.org/about/screenshots/coppercube-msw.jpg)

<comment><USER14> I'm simply baffled that you're nitpicking little things like those, and then jumping to the conclusion that wrapping a browser widget is the best way to display a GUI in an end user application. HTML/CSS UIs you're suggesting are notorious for using ugly, non-standard, completely hacked up widgets with ridiculous styling that don't fit in with the rest of the system.

Furthermore none of your nitpicks are due to wxWidgets itself and are mostly due to the application developer making usability choices (i.e. using customized buttons, grouping toolbar buttons using color, etc.) or simple mistakes (like forgetting to turn off the grid view header).

<comment><USER13> As I said before

      I know they haven't built these programs themselves, so it's not necessarily their fault
      that these developers have gone with the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink style of UI
      design. But they also chose to feature these particular projects, so someone there
      thinks these are good examples, which does not speak well towards their commitment to
      enabling good design.

And they aren't little things. Replacing standard buttons in some cases but not others confuses the user as to what elements are actually interactive. Not using the layouts that the operating system vendor recommends for different types of applications confuses users as to where to expect to find things. Using your own, janky set of icons without text labels confuses users as to which buttons do what.

I mean, have you even _used_ KiCAD? It's an absolute abomination of UX.

You know how programmers have a reputation for being bad at design? You know how programmers have a reputation for "not having any common sense"? This is why.

<comment><USER14> The point is, using a silly web UI in a browser widget, as you suggested, makes the problem worse.

TBH your argument sounds like a designer trying to justify being a designer. No real users are "confused" by any of the things you've nitpicked about. You're conjuring up some uber-stupid theoretical user as a strawman. But feel free prove me wrong by finding real people on the web complaining that they're confused by those issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> When will this trickle down to wxPython?

</comment><comment><USER16> In the early 2000's I wrote a few apps with this toolkit and was quite happy with them. The native widgets looked/worked correctly and were "snappy." Around that time everyone decided that we would use QT from now on, even though it looked slightly off. I never had any complaints about wxWidgets/Python except for the passing of ID numbers. _shrug_

</comment><comment><USER17> -> Better support for high DPI displays, especially under Windows

Really happy about this because it's becoming a serious issue if you support several variations of windows from XP to 10...</comment>


Chinese workers build 15-story hotel in just six days - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20101112/bs_yblog_upshot/chinese-workers-build-15-story-hotel-in-just-six-days

<comment><USER2> I've witnessed something similar. During the 2008 Olympics, I studied abroad in Beijing and was pretty fortunate to stay at the BNU campus where they hosted the training complex for the U.S. Olympians. I saw with my own eyes a 5 story training complex built from the ground up in two weeks.

They did it in day/night shifts. One team worked day while one team worked night. At around the 12 hour mark they would switch off. They wore no helmets or masks and worked quite rapidly. There was maybe one or two hours when the building was not being worked on.

In the end, the product was impressive and sturdy. The building looked slick and I know for sure our athletes liked it. I saw the swim, fencing, and basketball teams walk in and out of it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I find it sad that this would never happen in the US. There is so much red tape to cut through, construction projects of just simple diners takes months. Getting small cites to act and do inspections takes planning since they rarely act with any sense of urgency plus the amount of inspections needed at every step of the project.

<comment><USER4> I'd like to note that the foundation had already been laid. Considering the foundation work is largely the longest process in the building anyway, I don't see a 6-day building time as an improvement when you've still got to wait a month or more for the foundation to be laid and cured, then you really haven't advanced much.

Considering that they used 6 cranes and crews working throughout the night, this was still a 18-day regular construction for 8-hour work days. Assuming the 6 cranes were performing equally and to their max this would have been 108-days of construction using a regular Western crew with 1 crane. Roughly a total 30-week construction - sounds about typical to me for non-prefabricated construction, if not rather slow in man-hour comparison and we're talking opposed to _unionized labor_ which is possibly the slowest construction workforce in existence.

<comment><USER5> > unionized labor which is possibly the slowest construction workforce in > existence.

Any references for this statement? I have quite a few union friends who bust their asses 6 days a week doing construction, and would be kicked off their projects if they didn't..

<comment><USER6> One reference indicating greater speed for union labor (typically higher skilled, but more expensive per hour):

[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-232X.1988....](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-232X.1988.tb01003.x/abstract)

Reference: "This study examines the impact of unions on efficiency in retail construction in the late seventies. Square footage put in place per hour is 51 per cent greater for union than nonunion contractors. The study finds no difference in mean cost per square foot and offers mixed econometric evidence on Tran slog cost functions. There is also no difference in profit rates or prices between union and nonunion contractors."

<comment><USER7> What if we correct for union membership and just look at skill level?

<comment><USER8> I don't know if they can be decoupled. One of the biggest improvements unions made is the apprenticeship requirement, which prevents businesses from hiring unskilled labor for skilled work at well below market rates.

<comment><USER9> Isn't the market rate defined as whatever you can get away with on the market? (Or do you mean, they hire unskilled labour below the market rate of skilled labour?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We had an in-and-out built in Redwood City in about 30 days. I thought that was a world-class amazing feat of engineering, project management, and construction. I'm somewhat in awe of the 15-story hotel project. I wonder if the process/margins/tools they used are repeatable, or whether it made sense just as a stunt.

</comment><comment><USER10> The volume of ignorance and bilateral racism in the youtube comments astounds.

<comment><USER11> Wait, seriously? This is _youtube_ we're talking about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This reminds me of the german house build on Grand Designs that went up in a few days. Prefab is definitely quicker.

You can apply factory optimisations to prefabricate - and store materials.

This reduces dependencies, and thus delays, and also increases speed. It reduces injuries, waste, environmental impact, building disturbances for neighbours. The quality is also improved.

Make a modern factory at every site where you want to build something, or have the modern factory send prefabricated parts?

</comment><comment><USER13> Call me in 50 years and let me know whether or not that building still stands. I could build a Facebook clone in just six days too.

</comment><comment><USER14> On the seventh day, they rested.

On the eighth day, it falls over: [http://gizmodo.com/5304233/entire- new-13+story-building-tips...](http://gizmodo.com/5304233/entire-new-13+story- building-tips-over-in-shanghai/gallery/)

Maybe that red tape is there for a reason.

</comment><comment><USER15> Ironically, they will probably tear it down just as fast: [http://www.zerohedge.com/article/china-proudly- demolishing-b...](http://www.zerohedge.com/article/china-proudly-demolishing- buildings-completed-pursuit-great-housing-bubble-perpetual-engine)

</comment><comment><USER16> Now, do you want to be the first guest in this hotel? Honest?

</comment><comment><USER17> Already submitted with conversation:<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1895354>

</comment><comment><USER18> The Chinese have Amish, too? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barn_raising></comment>


Stunning close-up of Saturn's moon, Pan, reveals a space empanada - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/03/space-empanada-frozen-ridge-around-saturn-s-moon-pan-collected-planet-s-rings <comment><USER2> > space empanada

Shadow makes it unclear, but my bet is on a space ravioli. Better symmetry.</comment>


Can You Learn To Code In One Day? We Sent A Non-Nerd To Find Out - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1801711/cand-you-learn-to-code-in-one-day-we-sent-a-non-nerd-to-find-out

<comment><USER2> "The planning session was enlightening because what became obvious is that it's easy to describe how you want a user experience to feel--friendly, welcoming, and so on--but what you specifically want an application to do is separate from that."

If every non coder could learn this it would save us all a heck of a lot of time

</comment><comment><USER3> Godadmnit, being able to code a bit is no longer "Nerdish", it is fast becoming an essential skillset that every school leaver should have.

And before all those people come and say "Only a coder would say that" I include things like people writing various stuff in excel to help their spreadsheet calculations as coding.

This whole "Anything vaguely technical = Nerd" thing is really getting to me, maybe I have just been watching the old farts at SOPA to much

<comment><USER4> You're completely right...there's no reason why programming can't be as fundamental as reading and math.

<comment><USER5> Except now students leave highschool without a solid background in math as is. The North American education system should be fixed before new topics get piled on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> And you can learn to build a house in a day... because you managed to figure out a tent (with skilled help).

</comment><comment><USER7> _Can You Learn To Code In One Day?_

Ultimate HN linkbait.

<comment><USER8> Agreed, the article was mostly fluff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is like asking: Can You Learn To Play a Musical Instrument In One Day? and then sending someone who can't even read sheet music.

Suzuki said, "Knowledge is not skill. Knowledge plus ten thousand times is skill." In other words, you need to do a lot of coding (including debugging) to become proficient at it.

</comment><comment><USER10> I know much of this is the same to the average person, but is it weird that I cringe a little when I see markup and stylesheets referred to as 'code'?

<comment><USER11> But they /are/ code. They're sequences of characters that get lexically analysed, parsed in to an abstract syntax tree, executed by an interpreter and make a computer do stuff. "Code" != "Turing complete"

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Remember when we had to "program" our VCRs? I kind of share the feeling that "our word", in this case "code", is being abused and overly simplified, but overall I don't really care. People are taking the mental effort to design something in their heads and then realize it by directing the tools available to them (with some guidance of course); the more of that the better. The main danger is in leading people to believe that what they did is it.

Sure it's like calling the making of a tune with one of those "press this object/key to make this sound, that object/key to make that sound" apps ( <http://distoorted.livejournal.com/10914.html> is the most recent one I saw ) "composing", but I can't even work those apps let alone design a pleasing fugue or canon. Taking 8 hours to be instructed in some very basic musical theory in that context would probably be beneficial anyway.

</comment><comment><USER13> It sounds like he had a productive day learning, but from the article it's not clear that he came away with a real appreciation for the fundamental difference between (HTML and CSS) and Javascript.

I may be biased, but to me the verb "to code" means implementing things that require Turing completeness to express.

<comment><USER14> CSS is actually Turing complete: Eli Fox-Epstein used CSS to encode Rule 110, which was proven by Matthew Cook to be Turing complete.

<comment><USER15> [https://github.com/elitheeli/oddities/blob/master/rule110-gr...](https://github.com/elitheeli/oddities/blob/master/rule110-grid.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can you learn to perform surgery in one day?... yes! but most likely you will be arrested for murder.

</comment><comment><USER17> I could take a day long course in marketing and speak like a marketing exec..so what? That doesn't mean I'd be capable of solving real world marketing problems.

How about on day 2 the new web coder gets an assignment: The client wants an ugly picture to cascade in the background of their website and the client is thinking about moving all their data to Sharepoint because they heard it's best solution (no matter what the problem). You're job is to deliver the the correct solution. Go.

<comment><USER18> > I could take a day long course in marketing and speak like a marketing > exec..so what?

Because if your job entails speaking _to_ marketing execs, now you'll be more qualified to do so.

Likewise, if a crash course in coding gives you a better ability to talk to the programmers you work with, that seems like time well spent to me.

<comment><USER19> Being able to do lots of things at a very basic level is an immensly valuable skill, because you can tell quickly what sort of expert you will need and communicate effectively with them.

Couple this basic understanding with problem solving skills and and you become able to sit down with subject matter experts and quickly come to a solution to problems they're stuck on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Replace "Code" with "Play the guitar" and the answer is obvious.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think in one day you can learn such things as the fundamental nature of data bits and the concepts of variables and loops in a day...that sounds lame but ask a non techie friend if he/she knows that HTML is just a text file. A depressingly few number of people realize this.

</comment><comment><USER21> This sort of thing is why Windows/OSX/Unity developers' idea of what's needed for "usability" is mostly BS. Most people aren't nearly as incapable of learning this stuff as we like to believe.

</comment><comment><USER22> Short answer: No.

Long answer: Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

<comment><USER23> There needs to be a fix for this attack. I suggest inserting spaces in very long sequences of non-space characters.

<comment><USER24> I think an easier fix would be setting the maximum width of each comment to something (maybe in % and dependent on the level of nesting) and letting overflow be visible. That should let all the other comments wrap normally without complicated logic or changing the behavior of posts like this.

Of course, I haven't done much CSS in a while, so I don't remember the particulars, but the important point is that you can fix this with CSS (I think).

<comment><USER23> The way I see it, the alternatives to forcibly wrapping are:

* Overflow that extends into the page margins (looks ugly) and either forces the browser to show a scrollbar, or forces the user to resize the window to view the full text (which may not even be possible).

* Overflow that is contained within the margins, and can only be read by use of nested scrollbars (I hate those, don't you?) or again, by resizing the window to widen the content column width (again, not always possible).

Of all the options, I think forced wrapping is the most visually pleasing. Whether that can be done with CSS I don't know. I do know that introducing spaces will do it. Other techniques may involve e.g. Unicode soft hyphen, see e.g. [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2011/12/13/10246...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2011/12/13/10246957.aspx)

Of course, another way to do it is to simply reject the input. That's the way Slashdot does it.

<comment><USER25> > Of course, another way to do it is to simply reject the input. That's the > way Slashdot does it.

huh. i'm pretty sure i remembered slashdot inserting spaces to break up pagewidening text, but it's been a good many years so i could be wrong.

<comment><USER23> I thought so too. I think that's where I got the idea from; that's why I went off and tested it, but it turns out that's not what they do anymore.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What will America pay to H1-B job candidates? - <AUTHOR> http://www.infocaptor.com/dashboard/what-will-america-pay-to-h1b-job-candidates

<comment><USER2> I'd like to see this offset by average salary in each area, too. Different places pay very different salaries.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am unable to understand the salary if we go by Infosys' stats

The for 7766 employees they are paying around 2 billion

Which means on an average they are paying 250k per candidate ?

Similarly Google the salary is around 360k

I do not think Infy and Google have that high salaries in US.

<comment><AUTHOR> The amount shown is actually the total pay each company will pay during the entire valid H1 status. Typically the visa is valid for around 3 years so if we divide by 3 we get the average "annual" salary.</comment></comment>