UK Government opens APIs, offers prizes for best mashups - <AUTHOR> http://www.showusabetterway.com/

<comment><USER2> Direct links to some of the APIs/data files:

Neighborhood Statistics API: [http://neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/dissemination/Info.do...](http://neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/dissemination/Info.do?page=nde.htm)

NHS Choices API: <http://www.nhs.uk/nhscwebservices/Pages/Webservices.aspx>

EduBase School Data: <http://www.opsi.gov.uk/advice/poi/edubase300608.zip>

XML data file of "official notices": <http://www.londongazette.co.uk/mashup/gazettesrdf.htm>

</comment><comment><USER3> In some ways this announcement is typical of the UK government. All spin little substance.

All transport information cost lots of money (GBP 50,000 for Train info), can't even get a free copy to prototype with.

None of the Land registry information is available. E.g. Houseprices, etc.

The map data released by UK Ordnance Survey is no different than what the other 1/2 dozen map providers have released in the past two years. They again charge thousands of pounds for detailed information like road location, etc.

If one wanted to do Everyblock in the UK. It would cost you 100,000 gbp+ to get started.

I think it's a good start, but it doesn't go far enough.

<comment><USER4> The group behind this, the "Power of Information" taskforce, are trying to fix this. They need people to build things against the existing limited set of APIs that demonstrate how important this data is, so they can use that as an argument in getting better data made available under friendlier terms.

<comment><USER3> Simon, I like the work that you guys have been doing. I hope something comes of this. Part of what is disappointing is that until they don't release reasonable amount of data. Forget innovation, nothing will come of it.

Case in point is that I'm interested in finding out good schools that my daughter can go to.

I've had a look at EduBase. I can't tell if a school is any good or not. Or if they would admit my child or not. I can get more information from <http://www.dcsf.gov.uk> or go to the local council website and download the admissions criteria.

Every school has a different admission criteria. Some care about how close you live to the school, some about where you worship or how christian you are. So if you have a child who is close to school going age and you want to work out what is the best school to send him/her to, you need to do lots of leg work. I thought about building such an app.

I don't understand what you can do with the address, name of school, pupil age and head teacher name. Isn't it easier to write a crawler for <http://www.dcsf.gov.uk>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is the UK Government the first to take that step? I think they are to expect huge benefits, at least after the first hype -if any- slows down and people start to develop serious applications. Bold move.

</comment><comment><USER6> A while back I wanted to make a train trip planner app for my local public transport system in Melbourne.

Rather than scrape their website I decided to do the right thing and ask permission to use their data. It turns out I needed to get written approval from the state public transport minister to get access to the data.

I thought it would be a good idea if they offered an API or web service, so that they can maintain ownership of their data. But also, so that people like me can still access it to make cool apps.

Anyway.. I'm getting off topic... I think making this kind of data available could lead to all kinds of cool stuff.

</comment><comment><USER7> On a similar note, what I would love to see is full, free access to pure, unadulterated historical data from all facets of government.

In the U.S. for example, try finding the correlation between GDP growth and number of border arrests. Or domestic oil consumption versus domestic production versus unused land leased to oil companies.

Just a simple directory that would pull data from CIA, BLS, DHS, Treasury, etc. And you can download them in whatever format you chose.

I'll put that on my conversation list when Barack comes over to my house for hamburgers. He really likes my recipe.

</comment><comment><USER8> RateMyPrison - <http://visits.sicamp.org/> \- Brilliant Stuff!

</comment><comment><USER9> The UK Ordnance Survey (government mapping organisation) opening up its data is a big step - and not before time. Until now they've been very precious with releasing any of their tax-payer owned information.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Related article on how governments should open up their data and become platforms: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=198512>

</comment><comment><USER10> Can U.S. citizens enter? Nothing in the rules that says no.

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe in the faq it says anyone can enter. The only caveat is Civil Servants can't receive a monetary prize and instead will be given a gift, such as a macbook air.

<comment><USER11> I am a civil servant/not in the UK can I enter?

All ideas must affect and be implemented in the UK, but other than that the more ideas the merrier! The only caveat if you are a civil servant is that you will not be eligible to win financial elements of the prize. We are arranging for an alternative prize that can be awarded - something like a Macbook Air.

I'm not sure, but I think that's saying you have to be in the UK. It's not very clear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Neat. Strange that it's a .com though.

<comment><USER2> I found direct links to several of the APIs and data files and they all have .uk extensions.

I was confused by the .com web site as well, not quite sure whether or not they are affiliated with the UK government..?

<comment><USER13> Probably not officially otherwise they would have a .gov.uk domain, but I imagine they must be at least loosely affiliated with the government to be pushing this sort of idea.</comment></comment></comment>


Why Ambassador, With This Perimeter You Are Really Spoiling Us - <AUTHOR> http://willwiles.blogspot.com/2010/02/why-ambassador-with-this-perimeter-you.html

<comment><USER2> Hrm. I like the points, but I get a sense of shifting goalposts. The problem's not the building, we're really OK with that, it's the stand-off zone. Except that the problem's not the stand-off zone, we're really OK with that, it's the security coverage beyond.

In _London_ , a city covered with security coverage and monitoring. Please!</comment>


30 Login Forms with Creative Design - <AUTHOR> http://speckyboy.com/2011/07/21/30-login-forms-with-creative-design/

<comment><USER2> I think a lot of these look terrible. And, they're not really 'creative' - most are totally obvious username and password fields.</comment>


Disinformation Report: An Investigation into Russian IRA Activities in 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://www.newknowledge.com/disinforeport <comment><USER9> I have been disturbed by the flippant HN response to these findings (especially in a related thread yesterday). I listened to a radio program this week (KPFA or KQED can't remember) with one of the researchers whose findings were in the Senate report.

I was blown away by the magnitude and the tactics used, starting years before the elections laying groundwork.

The researcher did not pull punches, calling it straight up espionage. Unwitting Americans were personally contacted by the IRA, an agency whose funding is closely tied to Russian intelligence and whose members have been indicted by the Special Counsel. Groups on both sides were bolstered with IRA funding, organizing, propaganda, and social media support. Once a movement or fb page or protest gained enough momentum, the IRA then sabotaged the movement by reframing them as violent, stupid, liberal, racist, or whatever buzzword they co-opted for effect. They would also frame the protest as artificial, fake, funded by outsiders, etc - anything to poison the well or co-opt an originally well meaning or organic group.

One end goal was to disillusion support for protests in general. The severity, indsidiousness, and sophistication cannot be overstated. The fact that people still claim it had no effect is a PRODUCT of their efforts.

<comment><USER10> Not to mention the immediate flagging of _any_ such post. Sure, political posts are frowned upon here but this is an extensive report on a widespread disinformation campaign utilizing the tech that no doubt a number of HN readers helped create, or help maintain.

I wonder who would benefit from flagging this off the frontpage as quickly as possible?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> There's consistently a lot of shock and outrage about foreign interference in American elections, however there seems to be no feasible solutions to the problem. If, as people seem to be doing, "election interference" doesn't mean hacked voting machines but 'hacked voters' (exposure to subversive foreign propaganda), then there is no defense against it without going to what we would consider a repressive state. Low-cost social-media memes, groups, and bot-comments are a super-weapon that can be deployed against any government that purports to be 'democratic' in its methods.

At a _minimum_ , to actually combat 'foreign interference in elections,' the US would need to: \- rigorously require anyone paying for political ads on social media to be US citizens, \- require anyone posting comments on US- visible political social media topics to also be US citizens, \- limit the exposure of US citizens to foreign media, both state-sponsored and 'private' \- place additional surveillance or suspicion on first/second-generation immigrants who may be spreading latent ideological memes from foreign governments

In short, a China model rather than a traditionally Western model. In a globalized society with such free flow of information, is it even possible to have a national democracy that doesn't implicitly give the rest of a world voting access through rival-state mechanisms?

</comment><comment><USER12> Internet Research Agency, not the Irish Republican Army.

<comment><USER13> Yes, that time where the American public knowingly funded terrorism against one of their political allies.

 _sigh_

Thank goodness for the good friday deal.

wait what? the tories broke that deal by their deals with the DUP, and about to rip it to pieces with threats of a hard brexit?

surely not!

 _sigh_

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> These statistics about the dataset are interesting:

~10.4 million tweets (of which ~6 million were original) across 3841 twitter accounts

~1100 YouTube videos across 17 account channels

~116,000 Instagram posts across 133 accounts

~61,500 unique Facebook posts across 81 Pages

There were ~77 million engagements on Facebook, ~187 million engagements on Instagram, and ~73 million engagements on original content on Twitter.

</comment><comment><USER14> The more we discover the more it becomes apparent how absolutely _terrified_ these folks were of Hillary Clinton.

<comment><USER15> I don't see proof of that. I do see proof that they sought to divide the USA into hostile micro political factions.

<comment><USER14> They nearly exclusively attempt to prop up anti-Hillary sentiment from both the left and right. They only switched to criticizing trump - and even then only sometimes, since they've also target the Mueller probe - after he was elected.

<comment><USER16> That's consistent with an attempt to weaken and divide America without being especially _afraid_ of Clinton, if they judged up through the election that Clinton was most likely to win (and, therefore, the highest value to weaken support for so that her Administration would be beset by conflict on all sides) and (given that despite the wide ranging support for anti-Clinton sentiment, there was strong focus on pro-Trump efforts even in the primary) that Trump was the weakest, most compromised and/or compromisable candidate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> One interesting tidbit in the report is the claim that the platforms intentionally scrubbed potentially useful metadata from the data they provided the Senate.

</comment><comment><USER17> Perhaps clarify which IRA you mean in the title.

<comment><AUTHOR> Done.

<comment><USER18> The title is still "Disinformation Report: An Investigation into Russian IRA Activities in 2016".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This kind of org seems cheap enough to setup.

So I am just wondering why can't the same model be used (secretly or openly) to hack minds to do good? What would it take?

It feels like Bill Gates web presence is a fledgling example of it. There was this Cass Sunstein/Obama admin "nudge" attempt which probably was a little too ahead of its time(?).

What would such an org look like in 10 years and what would you like to see them achieve in terms of hacking society (positively)?

<comment><USER20> The memo that Sunstein wrote that you're referring to was in regards to competing with corporate power with similar state up-front advertisement spend (think PSA), not subversive mind-control like on display in the posting.

The corporate-owned politicians have spent decades convincing people that if the government tells you something, the gov is lying or somehow up to no good.

Sunstein wanted to push back on that.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I expected to see here more discussion of the methodology, tools, data analysis in the report.

</comment><comment><USER21> _reaching 126 million people on Facebook_

So, that's like a 500 dollar budget? Somewhere in that range?

 _Partisan content was presented to targeted groups in on-brand ways, such as a meme featuring Jesus in a Trump campaign hat on an account that targeted Christians_

It's an unbelievably tacky picture of Jesus wearing a red MAGA hat. Yeah, that's why people voted for him. I mean, yeah. The multi-million dollar ad campaigns from Clinton had nothing on crap sourced from 4chan.

If you watch the election coverage from 2016, they were going on about Russia minutes after Trump clinched it. Minutes. All together. And this shit is still going on. I was trapped in Atlanta airport shortly after the election and CNN had 4 hours of shameless Russia Russia Russia propaganda. And they're still at it. Joe McCarthy would have died of shame before carrying on like this.

Anyone interested in how propaganda really works needs to consider the top down, nationwide, nonstop campaign to destroy the president. Even if you hate the guy, consider just how much power is being exerted to negate an election. It's interesting if you look at this--because it's actual power, unlike silly two-bit posts on Facebook.

That same power could plausibly be turned in the opposite direction, and the left will be utterly staggered, like fish out of water.

<comment><USER22> The special counsel, NY Attorney General, SDNY and Eastern Virginia courts, etc are all following the rule of law. Hilary Clinton's foundation and Benghazi investigation went on for how long and turned up zilch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The ranking history for this post is weird ([http://hnrankings.info/18710482/](http://hnrankings.info/18710482/)):

21:10 - <USER2>

21:15 - <USER3>

21:20 - <USER4>

21:25 - <USER6>

21:30 - <USER6>

21:35 - <USER7>

21:40 - <USER8>

<comment><USER24> /me puts on tinfoil hat

It's even weirder in context. See links below. Was this deliberately manipulated off the front page?

[http://hnrankings.info/1/1-10/](http://hnrankings.info/1/1-10/) (last hour) [https://imgur.com/a/3HUbU2W](https://imgur.com/a/3HUbU2W) (screenshot for posterity)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The scale was massive, yet no one noticed this astroturfing campaign until the election... and this astroturfing campaign dwarfed all other competing astroturfing campaigns by other states/NGO factions?

All this talk of Russia astroturfing without any additional context, as if they're the only party astroturfing (Democrat-affiliated ShareBlue, for example, was kicked out of a large subreddit due to astroturfing)...

<comment><USER10> It was covered _extensively_ during the election.

However as time goes on more evidence emerges. That's natural.</comment></comment>


How to Download Live Images from Government Weather Satellites (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/weather-sat-9620228789c8 <comment><USER2> The article describes how to receive weather imagery directly from satellites using an SDR. It's a fun project, and surely useful if you don't have Internet access.

However, if you do have Internet access, GOES-16 [1] provides a beautiful full-color live feed of the Earth which you can easily download with wget/curl. For example, paste the following:

        wget $(curl -s https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/fulldisk.php?sat=G16 | grep -o -e 'https://cdn.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES16/ABI/FD/GEOCOLOR/[0-9]*_GOES16-ABI-FD-GEOCOLOR-1808x1808.jpg' | head -1) -O earth.jpg && open earth.jpg

It's fun to use as a live-updating wallpaper or background.

[1] [https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/fulldisk.php?sat=G16](https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/fulldisk.php?sat=G16)

<comment><USER3> This works on MacOS without wget:

        curl $(curl -s https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/fulldisk.php?sat=G16 | grep -o -e 'https://cdn.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES16/ABI/FD/GEOCOLOR/[0-9]*_GOES16-ABI-FD-GEOCOLOR-1808x1808.jpg' | head -1) -o earth.jpg && open earth.jpg

<comment><USER4> Do you know any reason this wouldn't work with zsh? I'm getting

      zsh: no matches found: https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/fulldisk.php?sat=G16

<comment><USER5> Zsh is trying to expand the glob, either quote it or prepend the command with "noglob".

<comment><USER4> Ah, that was it. Much appreciated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One of the most interesting parts of this exercise to me is seeing the Doppler effect in the frequency of LEO satellites as they pass overhead.

E.g.: [https://www.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR/comments/7qalaj/visualizing_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR/comments/7qalaj/visualizing_satellite_doppler_shift/)

It's also fun to build the absolute sketchiest MacGyver antenna you can imagine and use it to pick up a signal from space.

</comment><comment><USER7> The February 1985 issue of Rainbow Magazine had an program listing for Wefax, which made it possible for owners of the TRS-80 Color Computer to receive weather satellite images using a shortwave radio. This looks like a more advanced version of the same thing. Back then it blew my mind that a home computer could do such a thing. I didn't have a shortwave radio so I never was able to make use of the program. Will have to play with this one, if for no other reason than to fulfill my childhood fantasy of having an at home satellite receiving station. Won't the ladies at my high school reunion be impressed! (Probably not)

<comment><USER8> The Wefax pictures you could/can receive over shortwave radio are retransmitted from the satellites over shortwave for Marine interests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Those pictures look... pretty rough. I know the author says you can clean them up in software but doesn't provide any pictures of the images they've received cleaned up in the software they've recommended.

Is this actually worthwhile for anything other than just hacking for fun? Or is getting any useful data from this going to be a full-time job by itself?

<comment><USER10> Personally i would say this is just a fun project and novelty factor of receiving a transmission from the satellite. If you actually want to get your hands on weather data and do useful stuff with it let NOAA do the heavy lifting. I can wager that most of us here probably dont want to write the code to seam together satellite images and clean them up. However i wont stop anyone, have at it friends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A good video regarding this topic [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjClTnZ4Xh4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjClTnZ4Xh4)

</comment><comment><USER12> oh, man, I remember doing this in high school in the 90s (our system was run by one of my favorite teachers. He narrowly missed the Challenger explosion as a finalist of McAuliffe's spot). These satellites just rain information down to Earth.

I think we used an HPUX system to ingest and visualize data from the antenna. Definitely something Unixy.

</comment><comment><USER13> You can also download fairly up-to-date ESA imagery and radar images from [https://scihub.copernicus.eu/](https://scihub.copernicus.eu/). This covers a fairly large area worldwide.

</comment><comment><USER14> Or install the McIDAS suite:

[https://www.ssec.wisc.edu/mcidas/](https://www.ssec.wisc.edu/mcidas/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Might sound as a stupid question but is it legal to consume and use the images?

<comment><USER16> Yes. At least in the case of American satellites. Basically all information produced by the US (federal) Government that is not classified is in the public domain.[1] There are all sorts of weaselly ways that companies and in some cases government agencies try to limit this (for example, West Publishing, the company that publishes laws has copyright on the page numbers which are needed to reference those laws[2]), but in this case we're talking about raw data, transmitted on public airwaves, so there is really no question that it's in the public domain.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_works_by_t...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_works_by_the_federal_government_of_the_United_States)

[2] [https://www.wired.com/1994/05/the- law/](https://www.wired.com/1994/05/the-law/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Cool hacking project.</comment>


Linus Torvalds and Others on Community Burnout - <AUTHOR> http://www.datamation.com/open-source/linus-torvalds-and-others-on-community-burnout-1.html <comment><USER2> Thank you for posting something about Linus that isn't him insulting someone or giving an opinion about some inane and obscure subject ("Linus Torvalds on Hot Dogs: Mustard or Ketchup?").

That said, my experience with community burnout is that it tends to be infectious: someone burns out and turns into a total asshole, which causes someone else to burn out, which causes someone else to burn out. I've seen projects die this way (especially when one of those people is the project's maintainer).

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a sufficiently well-observed situation that Freenode even mentions it in their guidelines: <http://freenode.net/channel_guidelines.shtml#supportburnout></comment>


Two Social System Design Trends That Should Really, Really Stop - <AUTHOR> http://www.brianoberkirch.com/2007/08/14/two-social-system-design-trends-that-should-really-really-stop-like-now/ <comment><USER2> I disagree with both of his points.

For the first, it is convenient to automatically search for all of your aim buddies instead of having to do so manually. Of course I'd only do this on a site that I trust (Facebook is one example). It adds value for the users. Plus it is purely optional.

Secondly, while I can see that some people might find these email alerts annoying, I feel they are quite useful. Adds a bit of clutter to the inbox, but it allows me to keep up-to-date with the goings on. However, there is a link on the emails to change what types of alerts they send you.

These are my thoughts on these points from the Facebook perspective.

<comment><USER3> I think you might have misinterpreted his second point. He wasn't railing against the alerts per-se, but having them content free. It wouldn't be too much to ask for them to put an excerpt of the message in the email, but most sites refuse to do so to 'drive traffic'. (One of the sites I helped build is guilty of this too, so I shouldn't throw stones)</comment></comment>


Why are most of us right-handed? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20141215-why-are-most-of-us-right-handed

<comment> o0-0o This is related to eye dominance.</comment>


For sale: 1998 Sea Harrier "flight condition with minimal work" ($1M) - <AUTHOR> http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1998-BAE-Sea-Harrier-FA2-1290-TTAF-870-TTE-/270683496812?pt=Motors_Aircraft&hash=item3f05fe616c#ht_742wt_948

<comment><USER2> A lot cheaper than a super-yacht. A bit more likely to get you killed, though.

I once saw Michael Dorn's F-86 up close. On the side it said something like "Actor, Pilot, Klingon."

</comment><comment><USER3> Damn, I'm all out of pepsi bottle-caps.</comment>


Building a Data Platform in 15 Minutes - <AUTHOR> http://thinkingonthinking.com/A-Data-Platform-in-15-minutes/

<comment><USER2> thanks for the great post! btw would it be possible to add the application directory to the article for download? saves at least a bit of typing.

re the naming of databases & collections: this is indeed a good question!

You may want to organise all your Foxx applications in a single database, which then requires some mechanism to tell collections from different applications apart. Imagine you have two applications that both need to store "users" independently. Having just one collection named "users" would cause conflicts, so in this case it makes sense to prefix collections with the application name "myapp_users". On the opposite, putting all applications into one database also allows you to share collections between apps. For example, it allows to share users between two applications so you can implement single- sign on etc.

If your design decision is to put app goes into a single database, prefixing collections with the application name would still work but would be just overkill.

So in the end, how to best organise apps in databases & collections depends on your requirements. Foxx establishes some conventions on the collection naming, but if they don't fit your needs, it's still possible to override the default names and use different ones.</comment>


Show HN: I want to write resume in markdown, so I build this tool - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/timqian/resumd <comment><USER2> I did something similar using Pandoc and a dedicated template: [https://github.com/john-bokma/resume-pandoc](https://github.com/john- bokma/resume-pandoc)

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't get it. It's a markdown editor, of which there are a bajillion. I don't see anything that's obviously resume specific about it besides the stuff you happened to type into it.

what am i missing?

<comment><AUTHOR> In many cases, I need a PDF version of my resume. But not much markdown editor support the md2pdf process for now.

The only web app I find supporting md2pdf is cv.ftqq.com. But it is not possible to customize themes in it. I want to make the theme customizable.

So I build this one

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm also interested in the markdown editor. Is this something you build yourself (based on showdown) ? I also see some codemirror css in there, so it's not clear.

<comment><AUTHOR> it is based on an open source markdown editor [https://github.com/nhn/tui.editor](https://github.com/nhn/tui.editor)

About the codemirror css, it is there because this editor uses it to highlight markdown code

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> nice editor, can see changes live and there's theme selection too

see also another discussion here on HN [1]

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20162918](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20162918)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks asicsp

And actually, there is a more related discussion here[1]. Someone has built a md2resume tool 3 years ago but it is not maintained anymore. It inspired me a lot

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11026096](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11026096)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> 404

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing it out, I forget to make the repo public at first LOL</comment></comment>


Why Sync Is So Difficult - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2009/05/10/why-sync-is-so-difficult/ <comment><USER2> As far as I can tell, Dropbox has actually solved the desktop file-sync problem. It's the first sync product of its kind that I've used that works out-of-box.

Yes, sync is hard. Where I think things fail is mainly around user experience. You just have to make smart decisions and let users recover if they see something they don't expect. Dropbox does this quite well.

I learned this when I was at Microsoft on the ActiveSync team -- we actually were trounced by RIM not because our sync was worse (it was probably superior) but because we initially made the mistake of OVER-reporting status (even minor conflicts that normally you would want to just ignore.)

Sync should be a silent, no/very little UI experience -- a utility that just works in the background. Any attempt to make it more than that will cause the product to fail miserably.

<comment><USER3> Regarding _Sync should be Silent_ , In a perfect world it would be so, but this is far from it.

There is no way to automate this conflict resolution for binary files (if the same file is modified in two places). You can simply pick the latest modified version, but this is less than optimal (the other modifications will be lost then). Even dropbox isn't totally silent, in a conflict such as this, their server keeps revisions (so you can pick and choose the correct one, making it not silent).

Silent Sync (in a automated no-user-interaction way) has , is, and always be a dream (at least for the foreseeable future).

<comment><USER4> But this is _exactly where_ Dropbox is genius. They just keep both files - they don't scream at you that there's a conflict. In the case that you open up a file and it's not quite right, you're going to look into it. You'll find the alternate file and then copy/paste your changes in. Then you'll re-save and _ta-da_ , you're OK. But there are going to be all sorts of situations where you'll have minor conflicts, and the user will never, ever notice.

<comment><USER5> SugarSync also does just that: the file is duplicated and the user is left to resolve the conflict at a later time. Actually it does that in a really clever way so that if users keep editing over the already conflicting versions, it doesn't create new conflict versions but rather treats the new files as further versions of existing conflict duplicates...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Lotus Notes has been doing multi-master replication for over 20 years. The very architecture is built on it. Replication can be push-pull, push or just pull. And can be scheduled or user-initiated. It automatically merges changed documents during replication. When the automatic conflict resolution fails, then it saves both copies and requires human intervention. Damien Katz (creator of couchdb) was a programmer for a core part of Notes until about 5 years ago. And Notes was the major influence on CouchDB.

There are a ton of other good features in Notes (and a few bad ones too).

</comment><comment><USER7> Sing it, sister.

I implemented my own 2-way syncing for ShoveBox and its new iPhone app (wonderwarp.com/shovebox).

I was very thorough in the way I did it, but there are still small issues that I wasn't able to resolve by release time.

I'm going to write a blog post on this soon.

</comment><comment><USER8> Wouldn't building a sync on top of something like git simplify the whole process?

<comment><USER9> The problem is that not every change can be auto-merged, and a "normal" user does not want to deal with resolving merge conflicts. Binary file formats present another problem - imagine trying to merge two different changes to the same image or Word document.

<comment><USER10> It's actually even worse than that. Even plain text files can cause problems. You make a change to a file over here, then you delete the file over there. What should be the result of the merge? There are an infinite number of such screw cases because the "right answer" depends on the semantics of the data. For example: you add a line to a file over here, then you add the same line to the same file in the same location over there. What should be the result of the merge? Should you end up with one extra line or two? What if one line has an extra trailing space? What if it was an extra leading space and the file contains Python code?

<comment><USER11> But don't these problems exist regardless of your approach? Git and it's way of handling trees of old commits is a decent place to start. It clearly isn't a final solution, but building on top of it seems like a worthwhile direction, at least to me.

<comment><USER10> > But don't these problems exist regardless of your approach?

Yes, of course. That was exactly the point I was trying to make: it's a fundamentally hard problem.

> Git and it's way of handling trees of old commits is a decent place to > start. It clearly isn't a final solution, but building on top of it seems > like a worthwhile direction, at least to me.

That depends on what problem you want to solve. If you want to solve the _general_ data-storage-in-the-cloud problem, then Git is fundamentally flawed because 1) one of the inescapable aspects of the problem is that the solution depends on the semantics of the data and 2) Git _by design_ knows nothing about the semantics of the data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> SugarSync IMHO takes a backwards approach to syncing. Their original model didn't even include historical versions - wrong way syncs destroyed data! The system works by observing and then replaying the events (file creation, moves, etc.) observed on one device to others.

SpiderOak implements a different approach, having initially built a comprehensive journaling backup. Sync happens as a result of logically combining the journal entries from all available end points. There's no "event replay." The final state for a folder is calculated based based on the user's likely intent from the totality of all actions taken in each folder over time. The set of actions to perform locally on any device is the diff between the calculated end state and the local state.

There are still some good points here. The cross platfrom issues mentioned are subtle. (and SugarSync doesn't even support Linux.) For instance, ":" is a valid character in Mac/Linux filenames but not Windows. And the case sensitivity/insensitivity can create conflicts where they wouldn't otherwise exist.

For character encoding, Windows is actually the easiest with Unicode natively stored. Mac and most Linux distros use UTF_8 but there's nothing stopping users from dumping a bunch of filenames with arbitrary heterogeneous encodings all in the same folder.

<comment><USER5> The single reason why SugarSync listens to filesystem events is to build the journals and then merge them. I am not sure how that is different, and how that wouldn't match the user's likely intent.

You're right about the fact that there wasn't historical versions. But that was a year back. They're here now, have you not seen them?

Unicode encoding is very subtle. The difficulty is that there are several different - but equivalent - unicode encodings for the same strings, and the different filesystems use different normalizations to make sure that they can compare their strings byte-by-byte.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> We are working on a syncing product for companies and everything he wrote is spot on.

I would add that file locking issues is also a huge problem even when it comes to a _simple_ conflict resolution.

Throw in case sensitivity issues, among others and yeah, sync is difficult.

<comment><USER5> Aaaah yes locked files are fun too, I forgot to mention that in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some day, we'll have IMAP for files and this will all go away.

</comment><comment><USER14>
       Why Sync Is So Difficult ?

2-phase commit uses all or nothing and asynchronous replication does not use it.</comment>


Google Engineers Think This 72-Qubit Processor Can Achieve Quantum Supremacy - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/pam958/bristlecone-google-quantum-computer-72-qubits <comment><USER2> If there's something that I began to scratch and easily loose myself is imagining how do you program something using qubits, how the language looks like, or even an algorithm. In few seconds I come back to the 0-or-1 kind of thinking and can't advance.

<comment><USER3> Don't feel bad — in a recent WSJ magazine interview with Bill Gates he said, (paraphrasing), "I keep up with most of the new tech at Microsoft, but if there's one area where the math looks like Greek to me, it's Quantum Computing."

<comment><USER4> The basics of quantum computing are not difficult if you know linear algebra. The state of a qubit is described using a column vector that holds complex numbers. Gate operations are performed by multiplication on the states with unitary matrices.

A good introduction: [http://pyquil.readthedocs.io/en/latest/intro.html](http://pyquil.readthedocs.io/en/latest/intro.html)

<comment><USER5> That's the greek right there

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is there a paper out about this yet?

The blog post was weird: "Here's this chip we've made, but we don't know anything about its performance characteristics, yet." Made me skeptical about this being any kind of breakthrough.

<comment><USER4> >Made me skeptical about this being any kind of breakthrough.

As you should. Google is planning on sharing the results of this processor soon: [https://research.googleblog.com/2018/03/a-preview-of- bristle...](https://research.googleblog.com/2018/03/a-preview-of-bristlecone- googles-new.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > "Qubits will endow quantum computers with the ability to do certain > tasks—such as querying a database, factoring large _prime_ numbers..."

Why do people make that mistake so often?

<comment><USER8> I'm not a mathematician, so excuse my ignorance, but is it wrong to call it factoring? The definition of a prime number is a number whose only factors are 1 and itself, so you're still factoring the number to see if it fits the definition.

<comment><USER9> The real threat of quantum computers is not the testing of prime numbers, but the factoring of semiprime numbers (numbers that have two distinct prime factors). The difficulty of taking a semiprime number and extracting it's prime factors is considered an extremely hard problem, and this assumption of difficulty underpins nearly all of our modern cryptographic systems. If it were trivial to factor a large semiprime, one could intercept/hack all credit card transactions. This is the quintessential problem that quantum supremacy raises, and the most publicized; OP was remarking that the journalists likely meant to talk about this threat, but somewhat sloppily wrote prime instead of semiprime.

<comment><USER10> The lay audience might ignore semi-prime and just interpret it as prime. Or the author did that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'll believe it when I see Satoshi's Bticoins draining off to a new wallet...

<comment><USER12> That would be fun to watch, but to be overly pedantic about it, it will take a computer with hundreds of qubits to break current public key encryption.

<comment><USER4> It will take hundreds of fault tolerant qubits. That means it will take potentially millions of physical qubits of relatively high quality. There is a long road ahead from 72 relatively medium quality to millions of relatively high quality qubits.

<comment><USER13> As a layman, I've never heard of qubit quality. What is it exactly? How do you determine it? And why does it affect computation?

<comment><USER4> Qubit quality is defined by the quantum volume [0]. Errors that occur when gates are applied to qubits need to be below a certain threshold to perform error correction.

[0]: [https://www.research.ibm.com/ibm-q/resources/quantum- volume....](https://www.research.ibm.com/ibm-q/resources/quantum-volume.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> so at what point does a quantum computer's ability to factor large number threaten RSA (since RSA relies on prime factorization being extremely cpu intensive)?

<comment><USER15> Well, at a guess, you need at least as many qubits as there are bits in your key?

<comment><USER10> For at least one quantum computer you would need a way to encode the number in the qbit states as well as the algorithm, I think. It seems like something that may require a specially engineered quantum computer.

<comment><USER4> That is not how Shor's algorithm works. To factor a number N, Shor's algorithm uses a classical computer to pick a random number a where a < N. A quantum computer is used to find the period of f(x) = a^x mod N. This Wikipedia entry [0] provides a good overview.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shor%27s_algorithm#Classical_p...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shor%27s_algorithm#Classical_part)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: What is the best way to create/submit two YC funding aplications?  - <AUTHOR>

I have submitted one application already, will it cause any problems if I clear out the fields of the first app, and enter new answers pertaining to a second idea? <comment><USER2> yes. The directions say, if you want to submit more than one application, have one of your other founders submit it.</comment>


This Game Is Fixed: Democratized Content v. Voting Rings - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/democratized_content_v_voting_rings.php

<comment><USER2> I would think the problem could be broken into smaller detection problems:

* rings voting up new articles

* rings voting down new articles (burying the competition)

* rings voting down popular articles (consistently going against the grain)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not against the effort but in the real world the game will always be rigged because of "voting rings" that contain actual people.

I work with 4 other people who are on HN and we added it up a few weeks back and found we represent over 7,000 karma points. So we could easily get something on the front page if we colluded to do so. We specifically make an effort not to but I'm sure many (<http://bit.ly/aUKFwc>) aren't as honest.

To me that's no different than having bots do it for you.

<comment><USER2> The problem is poorly phrased. As you point out, it has nothing to do with bots or humans. There's still benefit to inhibiting rings of users (real or otherwise) that frequently vote together. Maybe some kind of diminishing returns?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good point, Perhaps votes really ought to count for less if you vote for a certain user's submissions all the time.

Solves the problem for both bots and humans... and androids... and any other Internet-using life forms.

'Cause really, I know the human power users are 50 times more traffic-gaming than the "spammers" or "bots" this problem addresses.</comment></comment></comment>


Zachtronics: Ten Years of Terrible Games (2017) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df9pz_EmKhA <comment><USER2> If you've not heard of TIS-100 then, given that you're currently on a site called "Hacker News", I heartily recommend it to you: [http://www.zachtronics.com/tis-100/](http://www.zachtronics.com/tis-100/)

Also excellent is Shenzhen IO: [http://www.zachtronics.com/shenzhen- io/](http://www.zachtronics.com/shenzhen-io/)

Also excellent is everything here: [http://www.zachtronics.com](http://www.zachtronics.com)

<comment><USER3> Every time I think about playing those games, I can't help but be dissuaded by the likelihood that learning actual machine language for ARM or x86-64 would be considerably less difficult and, in the long run, more beneficial to me.

<comment><USER4> Along the same lines, why spend all that time on this game when you are a programmer in real life! I look at games as a change of pace / relaxing not more programming. ;-)

<comment><USER5> In the case of TIS-100, I don't think the challenge of the game is 'write assembly' as much as it is 'deal with the somewhat crazy architecture and its self-imposed restrictions'. I've programmed some 6502 and x86 assembly in the past, but it didn't look anything like a TIS-100 program, which is more like a ridulously simplified transputer network with memory-less nodes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Zach also wrote Infiniminer ( [http://www.zachtronics.com/infiniminer/](http://www.zachtronics.com/infiniminer/) ) , which was the main inspiration for Minecraft.

" _Infiniminer is a first-person competitive mining game that takes place in a procedurally generated block world allowing players to mine, build, and explore. Sound familiar? That's because Infiniminer is the game that started the "block genre" that everyone knows and loves!_ "

Download at [http://thesiteformerlyknownas.zachtronicsindustries.com/infi...](http://thesiteformerlyknownas.zachtronicsindustries.com/infiniminer/)

<comment><USER7> I watched an interview in which Zach said that he gave infiniminer away for free because he didn't think anyone would want to pay for such a game. Ironically Minecraft is the video game that has sold the most copies.

<comment><USER8> My understanding is that Minecraft exists because Zach refused to takes Notch's suggestions on how to improve it.

So Notch wrote Minecraft, a better version, and sold it. And it worked out really well.

Infiniminer might have sold, but it wouldn't have sold as well as Minecraft.

And Minecraft then brought traffic to Zach (via people wanting to learn about Infiniminer) to drive sales on his other games, which seems to have worked out well in the end.

<comment> j-pb Still bothers me that with Notch we now have one more right wing white supremacist billionaire, while Zach seems to be a really nice guy that would probably have used that money for some common good like education :/

<comment><USER9> So right-wing that he paid his taxes in Sweden.

<comment><USER10> Notch is litteraly throwing around the n-word and other really awful shit, what point are you even trying to make?

<comment><USER11> What point are _you_ trying to make?

Throwing around the n-word makes him a bigot, not right-wing.

<comment><USER12> He's also embraced some of the deepest of right-wing craziness, Q, and was often parroting right-wing talking points with bonus homo- and trans-phobic tweets salted around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Also worth listening to the Zachtronics Podcast

[http://www.zachtronics.com/podcast/](http://www.zachtronics.com/podcast/)

There hasn't been a new ep in a while but it's an interesting insight into behind the scenes of developing games (and whatever Universe Sandbox is)

</comment><comment><USER14> Zachtronic games are great. If you want something you can play on your phone, take a look at Human Resource Machine. Different developer but still a coding game.

</comment><comment><USER15> I was quite a big fan of Shenzhen IO.

I found myself wanting to take it in to the real world, but really lost as to where to begin. Anyone have any ideas or resources?

<comment><USER16> Bread board and an electronics kit can get you started. Circuit logic works even iff all you have is a 9v battery.</comment></comment>


Audi Leads $28M Investment in Rental Startup Silvercar - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/04/audi-leads-28m-investment-in-rental-startup-silvercar/ <comment><USER2> > It also streamlines the reservation and payment process, allowing you to > make bookings through a mobile app and unlock the car by just scanning a QR > code.

And how does the app determine if someone actually has a valid driver's license?

<comment><USER3> The first time you rent a car, a real human validates your license and your credit card. After that, you can scan any car until you change your credit card or get a new license.

<comment><USER2> So basically the only thing that differs Silvercar from BMW DriveNow or Car2Go is that you use a QR code with a smartphone instead of an RFID keycard to unlock the car, and that it's Audis instead of BMW 3xx/BMW iX/Smarts.

How lame. And tbh I like the RFID card solution more because it doesn't depend on a working phone, a working camera (with enough light to make reading a QR possible) or a working internet connection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Super excited this is happening. I really loved the experience of using Silvercar. It is certainly a premium but the service has been delightful and the cars are quite the upgrade.

</comment><comment><USER5> My favorite way to rent a car when I fly somewhere. The overall experience (mobile first in a way that makes sense and isn't just trendy) is fantastic.</comment>


BrainFuck to Kernel - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Hullu2000/BFTK <comment><USER2> Interesting to read the minimal assembly/C shim.

</comment><comment><USER3> God bless America.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wrote all the code from scratch, including a 20,000 line of code compiler that makes x86_64 machine code from HolyC or Asm and operates AOT and JIT.

My JIT mode is not interpreted. It optimizes and compiles to x86_64 machine code.

I was chosen by God because I am the best programmer on the planet and God boosted my IQ with divine intellect.

<comment><AUTHOR> Best self-reinforcing remark ever.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Startuplister – A startup directory listing service - <AUTHOR> http://startuplister.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> In the vein of all the meta threads about directories and places to submit your startup, ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7525584](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7525584), [https://github.com/mmccaff/PlacesToPostYourStartup](https://github.com/mmccaff/PlacesToPostYourStartup), etc) i've compiled all of the directory submission forms into one form, and will submit your startup to the directories for a small fee.

30% discount code for HN crowd: HN2014

<comment><USER2> Sweet.. I just submitted to ProductHunt.com .. just need your twitter handle to get you in the game and answer some questions.

[http://www.producthunt.com/posts/startuplister](http://www.producthunt.com/posts/startuplister)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Just sent you a message.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm also very curious to find out how much you made today by being on hackernews today :) Would be awesome if you could share that tomorrow.

<comment><USER4> +1. Also curious how much you will make from this HN show post. I signed up by the way. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This reminds me of the "directory submission" services SEOs used years ago. Personally I doubt it's worth submitting to more than a few, Crunchbase, Angellist etc. In any event, I've never seen any significant traffic from these.

</comment><comment><USER6> Is this basically a linkbuilding tool for SEO purposes? Do you have any stats on typical traffic your customers receive through submission to these sites?

</comment><comment><USER7> If your startup is focussing on startups then maybe this could be of use. But I can't see the general appeal.

Besides adding a list of what sites you syndicate to, maybe startuplister could also provide a list of submitted sites (with an API too).

I can see the value, if you are going to list your startup on all of these services yourself by hand. But I do wonder about the intrinsic value of being listed on them too.

</comment><comment><USER8> 10 Years ago exist Search-Engine-Lister that do the same, today we have Startup-Lister, funny.

Nothing against your Service, 50 Dollars are a good price.

</comment><comment><USER4> Really wish I could save my startup form answers (to local storage) without submitting the form. I have to leave, and can't finish the form right now. Should be easy using something like [http://sisyphus- js.herokuapp.com/](http://sisyphus-js.herokuapp.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent point. Working on a fix for this now.

<comment><USER9> [http://garlicjs.org/](http://garlicjs.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip on GarlicJS! I just implemented it and it was super slick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Two questions:

1) Didn't see the HN discount, any chance that can be applied to my account retroactively? email@example.com.

2) There is alot to fill out on this one form. Can I save a partially completed application? What happens when I hit the submit button?

<comment><AUTHOR> Tim,

1) Just sent a refund and fixed the discount so it now will apply. 2) I think that is great feedback. I will work on implementing that tonight. When you hit submit, it's saved, but I will provide the functionality to edit it as well so you can have a partially completed application.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is totally worth the cost. I started manually trying to post to all those sites and it's just not worth it for me. Too time consuming. 50$ is pretty cheap. Great job

</comment><comment><USER12> Very cool service crixlet. Surprised ProductHunt isn't on there.

Also, the Useful Resources links at the bottom need hrefs and growthackers should be growthhackers :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks -- fixed the links.

I debated adding the top sources like Product Hunt, Crunchbase, Angel.co, and others but felt that those top tiered sites deserve a higher attentiveness than can be served by Startuplister.com. I think the idea here is to serve the longtail of directories...

That said, i'm open to suggestions. I did debate this for a while.

<comment><USER13> Be nice to send an email with those listed as a brucey bonus, maybe with some text to say these sites require a more hand crafted approach, and as such we are listing them here just to help you promote your service further. Or, an extra $10 gets you some extra links worth knowing about?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looks interesting!

It would be useful to have some sense of the relative importance of the sites on your list. Maybe Alexa ranks, as a start? Or data from e.g. compete.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. I initially sorted the list based on Alexa and PageRank. I think that data would be useful to include on [http://startuplister.com/the- list/](http://startuplister.com/the-list/). Good suggestion on compete.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Looks like I will be your customer in a few days for this: [http://ownmycopy.com/](http://ownmycopy.com/)

</comment><comment><USER16> Is this built on top of Mechanical Turk? Whenever I see something listed as "manual" my mind immediately goes there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently, I am the one submitting them to the directories. Though, to help scale I am going to hire carefully selected help. I do not believe mTurk workers would be qualified enough to be able to handle the submission process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is fantastic. I will be a customer in next couple weeks. If you could add more marketing services you can up-sell me.

</comment><comment><USER18> Great service, signup follows soon.

BTW, you have mixed content (HTTP vs HTTPS) on your signup page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Fixing the mixed content now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm somewhat surprised that Crunchbase is not on here...

<comment><AUTHOR> Sycren, Yes... I did debate this for a while. I ended up deciding that sites like Crunchbase, Angel.co, and similar caliber have more involved than can be served by Startuplister. That being said, i'd be curious to hear if you think it'd be of value to be able to submit to Crunchbase, Angel.co, Producthunt, and other similar services all at the same time.

<comment><USER20> It seems including those would give a more end-to-end feel rather than supplementing one effort with another. It would be a greater value add to have the largest sites also included.

<comment><USER21> Higher tier level (fee) to include the larger sites, i.e. angel.co and crunchbase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Great service, I will surely use you within 3 months!

</comment><comment><USER23> "Enter at least keywords"

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You should add startuptabs.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I actually do have it already listed! [http://d.pr/i/ypdh](http://d.pr/i/ypdh)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> seems like this link is dead?? did you shutdown the service

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope we didn't shut it down.. Are you still having trouble?</comment></comment>


How my startup helped change the world this week - <AUTHOR> http://nationbuilder.com/revolution_in_scotland

<comment><USER2> Congrats Jim! And here's hoping those in the US who continue to underestimate the power of social network sites for political organizing take notice ...</comment>


Ask HN: Visual languages for ocasional programming - <AUTHOR> Are there any studies or articles about the usage of visual programming languages for ocasional programming?<p>Think: a buissiness person writing a form validation logic in a scratch-like language. <comment><USER2> Visual programming, then called CASE (computer aided software engineering) was a big deal in the 90's but the consensus today seems to be that, once you're past toy problems, "visual" blocks made the task more difficult. The hard part of programming isn't writing the language text, it's figuring out the logic and deciding how to solve the problem. Visual tools don't make that easier and there's some evidence that they actually make it harder (because you have to conform to the way the tool works instead of just coding directly.)

</comment><comment><USER3> I was thinking a bot might be useful.

BOT:What would you like to do today?

create a lead form for our website.

BOT: Why? Just kidding...Would you like to see some examples of lead forms?

No.

BOT: ok...What fields you like to add to the form from my library?

Name, address, do you like sushi?

BOT: Would you like to split Name into first and last name?

yes.

BOT: ok.. I have a form with first name, last name, address and do you like sushi? would you like to see the form?

<comment><AUTHOR> For me at least, chatbots combine all the problems of using computers with the problems of talking to someone who has terrible short term memory.</comment></comment>


Judge Cracks Down on LinkedIn's Shameful Abuse of Computer Break-In Law - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/08/judge-cracks-down-linkedins-shameful-abuse-computer-break-law <comment><AUTHOR> It's not my title choice (I am preserving the original title), but I still think it's important.

To me, it'd be more authoritative without adding the emotion. Maybe they feel that adding outrage is required, to rile people up enough to care and spread awareness.

</comment><comment><USER2> Disappointing that this refers to LinkedIn instead of placing responsibility at the feet of Microsoft.</comment>


JailbreakMe 2.0. Jailbreak the iPhone on the device itself - <AUTHOR> http://jailbreakme.com/faq.html <comment><USER2> Did anybody hear about jailbreakme before this announcement?? I mean, we hear all about geohot when he says the word "jailbreak" and nobody (meaning the tech press) saw this super easy, extremely accessible, fast, computer-free (not even a phone restart!!) hack come? Call me skeptic but there are good reasons to be.

</comment><comment><USER3> It uses a PDF exploit. It is currently breaking facetime and mms for many people. I suggest waiting until the kinks are worked out.

</comment><comment><USER4> It can't be that easy. Did that really just work?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I tried it on my iPhone 4. It even installs Cydia and doesn't require a reboot.</comment></comment>


IPads Used For Play, Not Work: Citigroup Survey - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20110921/what-are-you-doing-with-your-ipad-playing-around-buying-apps-watching-netflix/

<comment><USER2> This plays into the argument that the iPad is a toy -- I disagree with this. Firstly that was the critique aimed at the first generation of PCs back in the day -- they were hobbyist's toys and if you wanted to do real work use a mainframe. Next I've seen friend in the real world who attach a keyboard and park themselves at coffee shops and get actual work done. One should also keep in mind that this is the first generation of these devices, my bet is that we're at the very start of a real change.

</comment><comment><USER3> While I'm inclined to agree with the article simply based on my own anecdotal evidence, I am skeptical about the results.

There is a very broad definition of what "work" is, and the iPad is a general purpose tool, so maybe a lot of people do "work" on it that, from another person's perspective, doesn't look like work.</comment>


The Story Behind "anyone can login as root" Tweet - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@lemiorhan/the-story-behind-anyone-can-login-as-root-tweet-33731b5ded71 <comment><AUTHOR> Or, "Why Public Disclosure Beats 'Responsible' Disclosure (at Least Sometimes)"</comment>


How LinkedIn Fundamentally Ruined Recruitment - <AUTHOR> http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/242554

<comment><USER2> Sorry, but I simply dont recognise the description of what it "used to be like"...

Prior to LinkedIn, agents were just as bad, in fact I now consider LinkedIn to be the source of high quality job leads.

For reference, I'm an contract embedded software engineer who uses and regularly gets both LinkedIn and regular agent traffic. I've also got 20 years experience of this job market.

This article is simply wrong.

</comment><comment><USER3> X technology destroyed Y job. This is not new, impossible to stop and a waste of time to whine about.

Instead our time is better used developing our skillset to be able to stay in the market probably focusing on the Z job that was created with the same new technology.

</comment><comment><USER4> _Whereas a headhunter would have known this and not approached a candidate with the opportunity.._

In my experience that isn't true.

<comment><USER5> You're right. I get 10+ javascript developer jobs in my inbox every week from headhunters, yet my CV says I'm a tech writer who can merely _read_ javascript.</comment></comment>


An iPhone prototype listed on Craigslist - <AUTHOR> http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/mob/2580204162.html

<comment><USER2> Nice try :)</comment>


Show HN: Open source non-linear notepad app - <AUTHOR> https://getmicropad.com <comment><USER2> Cool! I like this. A couple suggestions:

\- Instead of asking "Are you sure" to delete an element, just go ahead and delete it, but make it undoable. This allows for quicker workflow.

\- If I double-click an empty space, I would like to immediately insert a Text element and start typing, without having to aim the mouse again and click Text.

I'll probably be coming back to this when I need some note taking. Thanks for sharing this!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! I like the undo concept, that should be do-able.

On the quick-typing thing I was thinking that I could make it so that if you just start typing with the insert thing open, it'll automatically put you in a text element. What do you think about that?

<comment><USER3> Generally for usability I'd suggest to take a good look at OneNote, which in my eyes gets the "type and draw everywhere, with minimal friction" concept very right. And while the underlying data model of such an application may necessitate a collection of objects being scattered on a canvas, that doesn't mean that the _interaction_ model has to follow that directly. So indeed, just let me type anywhere.

Another thing that adds friction in my eyes is that when editing text your first click changes the interface into text editing mode where the text neither stays at the position you've seen it before, nor can you actually interact with it with that first click. So when I see a word that I'd like to change and I click there, that will only spawn the edit window for that text object, instead of just placing a cursor there so I can directly edit it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I use Apple Notes for this, and it is surprisingly great. Being able to drag and drop images and screenshots is great.

Having them synchronized to the phone instantly is very convenient. As a bonus, I can add sketches when I open notes on my iPad using the Apple Pencil. It is sweeter because I can even search for a text fragment I hand-wrote in one of those sketches.

Saying all of this here because, I wish there was an open source/self-hosted alternative that did that. This website showed portable apps on all platforms, and open source, got me very excited until I realized I can't just drag and drop images into a note. Neither can I add sketches on the fly.

Sorry, I didn't mean to critique your open source effort, and sound negative. My intent is to highlight an alternative that I enjoy, and perhaps bring some ideas for discussion.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can click anywhere on a note to insert an image element, but yeah drag- and-drop would be cool.

You can quickly add a sketch by clicking on an empty note and then insert a "drawing" element. It'll also work with the Surface pens.

I really appreciate the comparison, I don't use Apple notes so it's nice to know what they offer.

Thanks for the feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a wonderful looking project, thanks for making it open source! I am thinking of forking it for my own side-project and contributing to the development if possible.

As other commenters already noted, the UI/UX of the app will need some work. Just some initial thoughts:

      - Organisation of the notes is cumbersome: it wasn't clear to me what is meant with a note and a section, and how to actually start writing (I would expect to be able to start writing right away rather than first creating a notebook/section/note, choosing a title, etc...)
      - I would like to tag my notes à la Evernote, and filter notes based on this.
      - Speaking of searching/filtering: it would be nice to list all search results (and organisation of the notes for that matter) in the main view.
      - Maximise screen real estate for the actual note taking: why is there such a huge header and side nav... on a 13" screen I barely have room to see my notes. I would like to hide all that in a hamburger menu.
      - Keyboard shortcuts!
      - The ability to drag and drop images or other documents would be nice
      - The text in the textarea when taking a note is so small & there is no padding.

Anyway, hope that's useful feedback.. thanks again for this work! I will look further into it.

<comment><USER6> Here's vekker's list without the formatting:

* Organisation of the notes is cumbersome: it wasn't clear to me what is meant with a note and a section, and how to actually start writing (I would expect to be able to start writing right away rather than first creating a notebook/section/note, choosing a title, etc...)

* I would like to tag my notes à la Evernote, and filter notes based on this.

* Speaking of searching/filtering: it would be nice to list all search results (and organisation of the notes for that matter) in the main view.

* Maximise screen real estate for the actual note taking: why is there such a huge header and side nav... on a 13" screen I barely have room to see my notes. I would like to hide all that in a hamburger menu.

* Keyboard shortcuts!

* The ability to drag and drop images or other documents would be nice

* The text in the textarea when taking a note is so small & there is no padding.

<comment><USER5> Ha! Thanks for that, I'm mostly a lurker here so I was surprised to learn HN puts everything on one line, I thought indenting it was the only way to have a bulleted list.

<comment><USER7> Text indented with two or more spaces is reproduced verbatim, which is intended for code.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc](https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc)

There is no bulleted list format; just start the line with a bullet (such as a hyphen) and put a blank line between list items.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> lf-non People who prefer structured outlining (over non linear snippet collections) may find fluid-outliner[1] interesting.

After not finding any good signup-free privacy-aware zero-installation solution, which supported both rich text and markdown, I started prototyping on the above. It is quite early stage but fairly usable. Any feedback/contributions are welcome.

[1] [https://github.com/fluid-notion/fluid-outliner](https://github.com/fluid- notion/fluid-outliner)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh wow! That looks really cool. You could possibly even create compatibility with my app using the parser that I wrote [https://github.com/MicroPad/Web- Parser](https://github.com/MicroPad/Web-Parser)

<comment> lf-non Releasing the parser as a standalone library/utility is a cool idea. I'll check into this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wish there were some screenshot. I'm on a weak airport wifi and cannot really check this out now :(

<comment><AUTHOR> There are some on the snap store page: [https://snapcraft.io/micropad](https://snapcraft.io/micropad)

I'll look into adding them to the main site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is there is a guide to help setup a self-hosted version fo this app? I'd assume there would be a server which does the actual parsing and syncing, along with a web app which is used to render onto a web page?

I absolutely love the idea by the way, can't wait to try it!

</comment><comment><USER10> Hey do you mind if I ask you you handled code signing for your Windows and Mac apps?

Mac seems relatively straightforward, but Windows seems like an absolute cluster.

I'm releasing my own free open-source desktop app built with Electron soon, and it seems like the biggest pain in the butt that no one seems to talk about.

Overall though I love the idea, upvoted! Might even give it a go. Solves some big problems I have with note-taking...I've resorted to Zotero + Cryptomator + Dropbox for my own setup.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nothing is code signed currently, it's annoying but code signing for Mac and Windows is not cheap.

<comment><USER10> I know, but the UX is hobbled pretty bad IMO. There's a good chance less-savvy users are turned away altogether...

Good to know. I'm planning on not signing anything for my first release, think I'll stick with that plan. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was clicking around for a minute, not figuring out how to get started. You have to click "Notepads" and "New" first. I didn't see "New" because when I click a dropdown, I expect all menu items to be BELOW the initial button, so I skipped "New" and thought "Import" was the first menu-item. I must be an idiot.

Then I have to give my note a title... I don't know?? I just want to create a note, not title it... so I enter no title and press "OK" and... nothing!

So I press "New" again, enter random keystrokes as a title, and... now what? I continue pressing random buttons, now I try "\+ Section" (whatever that means). I got a collapsable section and 2 new buttons. Great.

Now I press "\+ Note" and I finally get a "Hey, you can do stuff now!" message.

Is it so hard to just initially create a note without having to create a "Notepad" and a "Section" first? And you have to name both things before you can do anything.

So I insert a text with markdown, enter some random text... now I want to save it. I see a big huge blue button: That must be SAVE! Oh, it isn't. It's "bibliography", whatever that means. The big red button? Oh that's delete... I haven't created anything, but at least I know how to delete it just in case.

I also like how the label for the text-area is "formatting help" and is actually a link to "formatting help" and not the label for the text-area.

Anyways, I found out you "save" by just clicking wherever. Fine. So I now wanted to actually name my thing. I'm clicking the title in the header. Double-clicking. Nope, that doesn't work. Looking for a rename button here... Oh maybe the sidebar. So I see that cog icon and I think: There, that's where you must be able to rename it, right?

And yes, a modal! With a RENAME button! Cool. So I press the RENAME button and POOF modal gone. Wtf??? Since the blue button I saw earlier wasn't a confirm/save button but a "open a modal" button, I assumed it opened another modal, but no: Now it just closes the modal. Whatever.

So I open the modal again and notice the name is actually an input field (gotta love Google Material Design). So I change the name and click the modal away, assuming it is saved automatically just like with notes. My changes aren't saved. Fuck.

So I open the modal AGAIN and assume the "RENAME" button is a SAVE button. Finally...

This whole thing is a neat idea, but there is much room for improvement on the GUI.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry to hear that you got frustrated. I did try to make little help videos (and I have a note about structure in the help notepad) but I understand that it should be intuitive without having to watch that or view the help notepad.

The bibliography list lets you attach URLs to elements on your note, which is helpful for when you go back for essay-writing and stuff. The formatting-help thing isn't actually a label but I understand the confusion there, I'll look into ways to improve that.

I'd love if you would take the time to formalise some of your criticism in a github issue: [https://github.com/MicroPad/Web/issues](https://github.com/MicroPad/Web/issues)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think it would be easier if there was no textbox, no click and insert text. Merely click, have a blinking cursor appear, write anywhere. After you've finished writing click again in an empty space and have the text box created, so you can resize it.

Similarly for drawing.

Ditch the boxes altogether while writing/drawing and have them appear afterwards for manipulation.

edit: Other than that your program looks quite promising!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I was trying that for drawing a while ago but I was having a lot of trouble getting it to work.

I'm thinking as a compromise for the mean-time I plan to automatically insert the text-box when you have the insert menu open and just start typing.

Thanks for the thoughts. It's great to get constructive feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I like the idea of it being non-linear.

In terms of features, being able to paste an image (e.g. like pasting into a github comment, or into a gdoc) would be great. I find I use screenshots into the clipboard more than saving to a file, however I don't know if others do as much nor if Windows / Mac supports that.

<comment><USER14> Mac: Ctrl+Cmd+Shift+4 to grab a rectangular selection to the clipboard.

Does windows have something similar? I've been using PrintScrn and Paint but it's comparably very awkward. I know there are apps, but "working in places where I haven't / can't install apps" is a requirement.

<comment><USER15> Yes Windows have a snipping tool[1]

Although I use it every day, I haven't bothered looking up keyboard shortcuts for it.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snipping_Tool](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snipping_Tool)

<comment><USER16> Win - Shift - S I think

Edit: that might be specific to the OneNote clipping tool though.

<comment><USER3> It has been promoted to a normal Windows shortcut in one of the recent major updates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interesting, though I'm not sure (yet) what I'd use it for. Here are my notes:

      - I was a bit lost in the empty state after dismissing the help.
        (perhaps not immediately entering full screen mode would be good)
      - Took me a second to realize the sticky-looking text isn't a note but rather the page.
        (I may have been thrown off by the word 'notepad' in the HN post title)
      - The '+ Note' and '+ Section' interleaved in what would be a nice outline is a little distracting.
        It also creates the note/section at the end of the list whereas the action labels are at the start.
        (maybe even better is if you can iconify them and place beside the parent container's text)

</comment><comment><USER18> I've often felt limited by the current state of note-making/todo/spreadsheet tools (ideally, they're all grouped into one app with cross platform sync), and this looks like a great step in the quick notemaking aspect. Glad to see it's open source as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. This also supports markdown to-do lists and I manage all of my tasks by putting #todo on my notes (which then show up when I search for the hashtag).

The only thing missing there is spreadsheets, which feels like it might be a little bit of feature-creep. Thanks for the feedback :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nice app. As someone who uses org-mode for note taking, I tried micropad. Here is a quick feedback:

1\. Add support for syntax highligting the code blocks in markdown may be?

2\. It is not obvious that full screen will hide the sidebar and how I can bring it back.

3\. App has several bugs I think. Trying to create a image note with 1MB image froze the application.

4\. Vertical space is a premium these days. A lot of vertical space in the app is wasted. Not sure if this being an electron app.

5\. Whats up with app icon? I am using appimage on Fedora.

6\. For some reason the note taking does not feel effortless. I do not mean this as massive criticism but as others have pointed out, allow deletion without prompts and allow undo.

<comment><AUTHOR> Syntax highlighting would be really cool.

1MB images should work perfectly fine. It is an image element right?

I have heard that the icons might be a little weird. I've been unable to test it because my install of Linux doesn't use icons. I'd appreciate help with that one if anyone can help.

Thanks for the other feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This Thing is creat. cons I find:

\- Hmm, no shortcuts? or keyboard support in general. Press arrow down to highlight a search result fails

\- bounding box for a note not needed (see onenote)

\- Search the content of a note not possible?

\- Too much chrome while note writing?

These are simple things to fix. Great project!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! There are some keyboard shortcuts (there's a page in the help notepad on them) but I would like to add more.

Not too sure what you mean on the bounding box thing, like the little border around elements?

If you want to dismiss the sidebar just click the little ">>" or press "f". Hiding the breadcrumbs in the focus mode is on my todo list. Thanks for the list, I genuinely appreciate it.

<comment><USER21> Agree about the bounding box, best seen when editing, rest of the time just a distraction.

I've been chasing a onenote alternative for some time, this looks promising. I have to add, I loved the old Onenote heirachy, notebooks down the left (rotated labels), sections across the top, pages down the right.

And more screen shots always help for those too lazy to trial. And add some default notebook/section/note naming, so people can just click and start adding notes.

Great work

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, the reason I made this was because of how big of a fan I was of OneNote, but all the little things that I wanted to change (and first-class linux support) drove me to write this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Nice app! I created a similar app a while back. The difference is that you can also connect the boxes(a mind map like concept) you create, otherwise, the click-anywhere-to-add kinda feature is similar. I'd appreciate it if you check it out - it's [https://www.mapsofmind.com](https://www.mapsofmind.com)

</comment><comment><USER23> I have been using Zim[0] for quite few years now. With various plugins, it allows me to write LaTeX equations, formatted code, tables etc. Overall it has been really good, but I feel the only thing missing is the support for mobile devices.

[0]: [http://zim-wiki.org/](http://zim-wiki.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> This notepad app does support LaTeX equations (instructions are in the help notepad). Sadly it might be an issue on mobile for you too.

MicroPad _works_ on mobile, but not very nicely. That is a key thing I want to improve though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Looks quite nice. Though some features which I think would make this more appealing (at least to me): Ability to draw lines between two elements. Link to other Sections/Notes. Copy & Paste images into it, rather than uploading.

Really nice tool, and I'll be sure to look at it to see how it changes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Dragging/copying in images is something I really want to do, so hopefully I'll have enough free time to get to that soon.

The closest I can give you to lines right now is for you to insert a "drawing" element and doing a line there. That's not a great solution though.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I got featured in [https://blog.ubuntu.com/2018/07/17/get-productive-on-the- lin...](https://blog.ubuntu.com/2018/07/17/get-productive-on-the-linux- desktop-with-7-essential-apps) under #6, so that was pretty cool.

</comment><comment><USER25> I love the idea of infinite canvas, OneNote has this and it's really freeing.

> The web-client works on any modern browser. It doesn't matter if you're > using a Chromebook, a Surface, or a toaster.

Apparently toaster beats windows phone, because it doesn't work on my Lumia

<comment><AUTHOR> I suspect that's because your browser doesn't support srcdoc with IFrame, I know Edge is getting it on the next version, they're just a little behind.

Also, yeah. After trying OneNote for a couple years I was just hooked with the infinite canvas concept.

</comment></comment><comment> scott-smith_us Thanks for doing this.

SUGGESTION: A video demo link would really help short-attention-span people like me. Something brief that shows it being used and highlights features that make μPad stand out (e.g. "infinite canvas" \-- what does that look like)?

</comment><comment><USER26> This reminds me of the old KDE application, Basket Note Pads: [https://basket- notepads.github.io/screenshots.html](https://basket- notepads.github.io/screenshots.html).

<comment> lf-non This is a blast from the past. Basket notes was my goto note-taking solution for multiple years during college.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Also linking notes to make them relate to each other would be great. Imagine a 'police board' with visible connections instead of a whiteboard...

</comment><comment><USER27> ICYMI this is an Electron app called _Micro_ Pad, stylized with the macro symbol of course.

Size: ~67 MB.

Don't know whether to laugh or cry.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that's the big issue with Electron. The "Micro" came from my original plan for it, which was to have a super small python script generate static notepad pages for you to visit in your browser. Obviously that's no longer the case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The trend of open source, zero knowledge sync and cross platform tools is really interesting.

standardnotes.org is another in that space

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, although this isn't 100% zero-knowledge. The keys are managed server side because the server needs to be able to read your notepad for the diff- sync.

I have written what I hope is a pretty plain-english privacy policy here [https://getmicropad.com/policy.php#privacy](https://getmicropad.com/policy.php#privacy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Nice project :)

1\. It will be nice to have the possibility to add videos to notes. Not just links to files. I mean video files that are inside notes and can be played inside micropad.

2\. Are there plans to add premium (paid) features besides paid sync in your clouds or all functionality will be available to everyone?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

1\. That's totally possible, although file-size could quickly become an issue with syncing the videos (there's a 50MB cap)

2\. Nope, All actual client functionality is (and always will be) free + open source. Even syncing is free (up to a point).

<comment><USER29> >although file-size could quickly become an issue with syncing the videos (there's a 50MB cap).

Is this cap from software or from the cloud?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> When I open it on linux without GPU I've got a high cpu load. Why a notepad need so high cpu load doing nothing ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Is it the Snap version? I think that does some decompression on load.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> What's "open notepad xml"? The only useful Google results I could find are for this project.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's just this project, it's what I call my file thing. I should probably ditch that part though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> For engineering notes, one might try [http://www.blockpad.net](http://www.blockpad.net), with OLE like ability to link formulas and tables between documents, shared repositories of such, and calculations with units!

</comment><comment><USER33> Don't OneNote and Evernote already do this kind of thing? (On mobile, haven't tried yours, yet.)

You should be signing apps if the smartscreen prompt really bothers you. Be mad at virus and malware authors that forced this, not Microsoft or Apple.

<comment><AUTHOR> Linux doesn't have the issue with codesigning. And no evernote doesn't (it's more of a page mechanism) and yes OneNote does but OneNote one Linux is non- existent and OneNote on the web is bad.

<comment><USER33> Code signing is not an issue, it is a feature. You can think of it as a way to programmatically check that the executable has not been modified since released by the developer.

FOSS sites often recommend that a downloader check the hash of a downloaded file against one provided, never seeming to realize that if an attacker can replace a .iso file that there is a high likelihood that they can modify the MD5 hash shown to match their modified file.

Code signing prevents this.

Code signing is a good thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Couldn't figure out how to type into it.

Opened the menu, created the new notebook. Then it's just empty canvas. I tried clicking into it but nothing really happens. The Android keyboard doesn't show, which means there's no text input.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, the mobile UX is really a sore point right now, on the sidebar, you create a section and then create a note. When you open the note you should see a message saying your note is empty. Dismiss the sidebar and when you tap on the canvas it'll open an insert menu.

The mobile UI is definitely more of a read-experience but I'd love to change that (and if any developers want to help with that it'd be awesome)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Does this use NodeIntegration? I'm kinda paranoid with Electron apps these days...

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope. The client is on its own. The only connection to node is in preload.ts, but that's a one-way relationship. Have a read of [https://github.com/MicroPad/Electron/blob/master/main.ts](https://github.com/MicroPad/Electron/blob/master/main.ts) if you're interested.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> "Your web-browser doesn't support important security features required for µPad v3 to function" is the message that greet you when you access the app in Edge.

Which security features are Edge lacking in this regard?

<comment><AUTHOR> I rely on iframes to sandbox, and as part of that I need srcdoc. Edge will support it in the next version iirc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> You might really like [https://notion.so](https://notion.so) , which lets you create non-linear notes but with a really cool variety of page styles

</comment><comment><USER38> It's funny that the main thing you do in a note-taking program is create notes but there's no keyboard shortcut for it. Otherwise, cool concept, will keep an eye on it

</comment><comment><USER39> Congratulations, looks great! Any chance of a 32-bit version?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I can look into it. If you follow the instructions on [https://github.com/MicroPad/Electron/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/MicroPad/Electron/blob/master/README.md) you should be able to build one on your machine too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Hello HN. You might like to try a competing offering I developed, [http://Write.Pub](http://Write.Pub)

</comment><comment><USER41> Cool!

Now make it compelling for folks who like ONeNote!:)

</comment><comment><USER42> macOS 10.12.6 says the app bundle is damaged and can't be opened.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm. I suspect that's because I don't do code signing?</comment></comment>


A Trip Down Market Street - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Trip_Down_Market_Street <comment><USER2> The "Dating the film" section of that article is just awe inspiring. Great detective work, and probably the closest to the "hacker" thought for which we come to this website.

</comment><comment><USER3> The film A Trip Down Market Street:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YRbMMqj0qw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YRbMMqj0qw)

</comment><comment><USER2> One thing that immediately sticks out to me is the pace at which the pedestrians move. There is the occasional brisk walker but most everyone seems to walk rather slowly, almost like strolling. In big cities today, you'll find that exactly reversed. Fascinating.

<comment><USER4> It is important to take into consideration that this is not a typical day in the city. Some of the pedestrian were aware that the movie was being filmed and traffic flow was actually staged (there weren't that many cars on the streets in the time, the cars in this movie circle around the frame several times). Some of these people probably went on a leisure walk just to see the filming.

That being said, yes, it is likely that average walking pace was slower at the beginning of the 20th century. We have evidence that just in the last couple of decades, average pace of walking has increased around 10% in large metropolitan areas.

<comment><USER2> You see some people taking note of the camera or even interact with it, especially kids. However, there are also a lot of people who just seem to be going on their everyday business.

The cars were apparently staged but it's not clear that the rest of the traffic was as well: the reason for the former may have been to make SF look like a more advanced city than it actually was.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some things I noticed:

1 - There seem to be some electric-powered vehicles, such as the trams at 3'25" and 5'09".

2 - There are no obviously visible homeless or mentally unstable people, though a film of the sidewalks might have been more revealing on this point.

3 - Mutton chop mustaches seem to be popular with portly gentlemen.

4 - The cars have license plates -- 4 digit ones, even. So the number of cars in the US, at least, was probably far less than 10,000.

<comment><USER6> "There are no obviously visible homeless or mentally unstable people, though a film of the sidewalks might have been more revealing on this point."

Homelessness was most certainly part of that time. More so, because at the beginning of the 20th century there was still not much of a social safety net.

Also, at the end of the movie it says: "4 days later San Francisco was hit by the great earthquake and fire of 1906.

3,000 killed, 250,000 homeless, and most of the ciy destroyed"

My observation was the incredibly broad road as well as the lack of rules in traffic (suddenly changing lanes etc). A lack of traffic signs, and a lack of physical commercials. It was snowy (which might've meant everyone drove slower), and people were just walking in front of the traffic all the time, only moving out of the way at the last moment. Not only with cars, also with horses and trams. People (I mostly saw men and some children at the end, women not so much) were looking like gentlemen.

Children acting up before the camera was fun to see because its apparently from all times.

I also found the atmosphere rather serene, not like a city of nowadays. The lack of noise and lack of commercials help with that.

"The cars have license plates -- 4 digit ones, even. So the number of cars in the US, at least, was probably far less than 10,000."

Back then people didn't travel as much. The world was far less globalized, travel was expensive, and people stayed within the city or region they were born (ie. an example of less globalization).

So I'm not sure about this. I'm not even sure all the police departments were connected to each other. If a car is seen in San Francisco that license plate might also be in use elsewhere. Its something we'd need to look into instead of feel conclusive about. Thanks for sharing your observations though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is the tempo and candence of city-life as it ought to be.

<comment><USER7> _cadence_ , sorry.</comment></comment>


Doom as a tool for system administration (1999) - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/ <comment><USER2> How did I never hear about this before?</comment>


Maths and tech specialists need Hippocratic oath, says academic - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/aug/16/mathematicians-need-doctor-style-hippocratic-oath-says-academic-hannah-fry <comment><USER2> Army doctors heal soldiers so they can go out and kill more people. The Hippocratic Oath is rarely applied to indirect harm.

An oath in the same spirit for knowledge workers would be meaningless, since their work never does any direct harm.

If such an oath is instead applied to indirect harm, how many levels of indirection is enough to wash your hands of all harm?

</comment><comment><USER3> 'We've got all these tech companies filled with very young, very inexperienced, often white boys...'

Wow. I got a taste of this attitude studying my MSc in early 2000s. We were forced to attend a couple of men-bashing lectures because the programme had apparently been criticised for being 'too technical'.

It was an Info Science masters; technical was what I was after when I signed up :|

</comment><comment><USER4> Teachers need an oath too: "I shall not give you an unemployable degree and saddle you with debt."

</comment><comment><USER5> We already got one. It's called cash Money</comment>


QUESTION: Am I crazy to go with www.get[nameofproduct]app.com? - <AUTHOR>

I'm really into the name for my new web app but can only buy the extension of it with 'get' before the name and 'app' after. Is this crazy? Or, should I just come up with a new name? How much will it really effect my traffic and overall marketing?
Examples of products with extensions:
Flow-www.getflowapp.com Highrise-www.highrisehq.com Harvest-www.getharvest.com <comment><USER2> AFAIK, this naming trend started with GetFirefox.com, which seems to have been pretty successful.

Anyway, in my experience, most people will either Google for your name or come in through a link. People typing your domain name into their address field are outliers. So I wouldn't sweat it overly much, in comparison to other aspects of your marketing.

</comment><comment><USER3> I never really understood the concept of starting with "get". If you expect a lot of users to come visit your site and remember your name, it's best for them to remember the first 2-3 letters of your brand.

For example: if I remembered Basecamp from a couple weeks ago... I'd type it into my URL bar. Had it been getBasecamp.com instead of basecamphq.com... it may not have appeared as easily. For my startup, I even go as far as emphasizing the first two letters so that people remember them (this is easy as it's "UP").

When picking a name, I would suggest that the first 2-3 letters are not the same as another popular website. For example: I would not name something factmaster.com because facebook would popup instead.

</comment><comment><USER4> Most people don't think domains are very important. I strongly disagree. You can definitely succeed _in spite_ of a good domain but with a little extra effort you can turn a liability into an asset.

My advice is always to spend the time to find a good .com. Domains like MixPanel.com or HelloFax.com are almost always unregistered (or cheap to buy). They're far more memorable and brandable than the alternative you're considering.

</comment><comment><USER5> 1\. Where will most of your customers come from? I get the feeling that (potential) 37signals customers first go to 37signals.com, then to highrisehq.com from there.

2\. Who are your customers? If your business is consumer-focused, I'd probably try to find a .com. B2B or to tech-savvy people, on the other hand, probably wouldn't mind GetXApp.com.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback. The app will be targeted at tech savvy people. Just bought it :) www.getgrooveapp.com. Product Name : Groove

<comment><USER6> Once the app is big and famous your lawyers will sort out getting the .com for you. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Crazy? no. the name will be what you make of it.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you can come up with something that is catchy, memorable and available that is the ideal. That is easier said than done. With the domain market the way it is, you do the best you can. All of your proposals sound like suitable domains for your purposes.

</comment><comment><USER9> Go for it. <http://blog.getgush.com>

</comment><comment><USER10> Domains ending with 'app' appeals to more people, plus you can use it for your iPhone/Android app.</comment>